Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent Ireland Party)

I will take this slot myself. I come from a construction background and have been in it all my life. Common sense is not that common. A definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I am delighted that this has been set up but the one thing that you have never got to is this question. With all the taxes that people pay and the funding that provides, employment is created and allows infrastructure to be developed. It is all a circle economy. The one thing we have never tackled in this country is overspending. As I said, I am in construction. If tomorrow I price a job for you for €500,000 and in six months time I say that I need another €500,000, what would you tell me to do? What would anyone in this room tell me to do, in that scenario? For decades, we have fallen down in the area of accountability for the taxpayers' money. That is why we have the overrun on the children's hospital. What do we do? We raise more taxes. We set up Uisce Éireann. It is not delivering and goes over budget on every single project.

There is no accountability. We give it more money. If we want things to work, there must be accountability.

During our last meeting, our witnesses said that if we had a steady funding stream, we would have better infrastructure and a future, which I agree with. We will not have that if we have overruns on every single project. We need to change the projects around. I am not here to give out; I am here to find solutions. We need to design and deliver.

Hospitals are being built to a set structure. The contractor gets a design and delivery contract. We may pay an extra 10% for design and delivery but that is a 10% cost we know. Anyone accounting for that budget will see it is costing €1 million when it should cost €900,000. However, that person know it is costing €1 million to deliver the project and it will not go to €2 million. If we put projects back on design and delivery contracts and there is an overrun, it is back on the contractor. That is how we deliver infrastructure and public projects in this country. For schools, it is the very same thing. The principle is design and deliver. The schools know what they want and will specify classroom sizes. What they need is design and delivery. That is how we tackle this.

I appreciate everything our witnesses are doing. However, there has to be accountability for the funding stream they stated we need as well as for design and delivery. Take Departments out of it. We had a county council structure set up before when contractors came in for the delivery of services. The councils oversaw the budgets and knew what they had to do with those design and delivery contracts. If I ran my business the way some of the Departments run their businesses and overruns, I would not be in business. Why is it any different for me as a taxpayer and an employer than it is for Government officials or Departments to have overruns where there is no accountability? That is where our problem lies. I am being very honest with this. If I am accountable as an employer, there should be accountability by anyone in design and delivery. How can our witnesses help me, this country and its taxpayers to get accountability in design and delivery for infrastructure? Who wants to take that question?