Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 7 February 2019

Public Accounts Committee

Business of Committee

9:00 am

Photo of Seán FlemingSeán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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Yes, we will ask for it to be as soon as possible. The next items, Nos. 1923, 1924 and 1929, are from the Ceann Comhairle and the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Justice and Equality. I propose we discuss their contents briefly in private session and provide a short summary of our observations when we return to public session.

The next item, No. 1925, from Professor Chris Fitzpatrick, consultant obstetrician, gynaecologist and master of the Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital, dated 6 February 2019, requests an opportunity to appear before the committee in respect of the financial overrun at the national children's hospital. He was in a key position because the co-location involved the Coombe Hospital, of which he was the master, and the issue was fundamental to the decision on the co-location. It was not suggested to move the hospital miles away but he suggested another site, adjacent to the current site, that would have facilitated all the issues. He said he highlighted the cost overruns. Nobody knows when the Coombe Hospital will be co-located with the new paediatric hospital. We will not invite everybody to the committee who writes to it, but we will just hold the door in this regard, while thanking him.

We will not decide just yet. We may decide that he will go to the Joint Committee on Health, if it wants to see him, but his entire email to us is strictly about financial matters related to the project. He could have a useful input to make and perhaps on the day Mr. Watt is to attend the committee to discuss capital projects we might have a separate session. I would not like to dismiss it, nor would I like to accept it straight up.