Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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This is an unusual appraisal of the Estimates in the sense that two issues seem to dominate the agenda. I point out that we need to examine the rest of the agenda as well because it is a very important and expensive budget and one that has required further attention as the year goes by.

To dispense with the other two subjects first, when we have the benefit of hindsight, we generally are correct in everything. It is a case of 20-20 vision afterwards. However, we should remember one thing about the cervical smear tests. It was not the greatest day in the delivery of services to the women who tried to avail of those services when it transpired that some of them were not told the outcome. At one stage somebody said there should be a pause and their health suffered. A considerable number of women still have not had their issues resolved. We tend to dismiss the seriousness of that with the passage of time. I have no doubt that the obvious thing to do was err on the side of safety and take whatever steps had to be taken to ensure that reassurance was given to all the women who wanted it - the counselling and the GP service - and on the basis of that advice either to have another test, which many of them did not have, or not have one. That was the right decision and milling around with it afterwards is playacting. We can spend the next 12 months doing that but it will not change the reality of the issue, namely, that there were serious problems, some of which still exist in regard to the speed with which tests are carried out and in regard to the various laboratories. This was an appalling thing to happen and it should have not happened, but we must remember that that system was not put in place last month or last year but several years ago.

Some of us did not think it was very wise at the time, but it was there and it did serve its purpose in the sense that it did save the lives of many women. That has already been illustrated again and again. It is a bit like the Minister taking responsibility for the bad news and the good news. We in the House, in general, have to do the same thing. It did address the issues in so far as many women were concerned in general. We know that it was not an accurate diagnostic procedure. Notwithstanding disclosure decisions, full disclosure still does not seem to take place. I cannot understand why that is but that is a matter for another day. Ultimately, in the courts evidence emerged to the effect that there was a considerable neglect of the procedures that should have taken place in the interests of health and safety and of women who were the subject of particular tests. It would be totally unacceptable if anything other than moving everything that could be done to ensure that those women who still have a question mark in their minds over their health should be reassured because the panic causes other problems as well for women. I am weary of listening to the same story over and over again. We need to improve the quality and veracity of the tests and the speed with which the results are obtained but going back over what happened in the past 20 years will not solve that problem. We all should recognise that the extent to which women were traumatised and women's health and lives were put in jeopardy was totally unacceptable.

I do not wish to continue for as long as my colleagues, which is not to suggest for a moment that they should curtail their outbursts in future. I will, however, try to deal with the children's hospital insofar as I can. One of the issues I raised in the committee at the very outset is that there was a number of boards sitting in parallel, as it were. I was not satisfied that the degree of discussion between those boards was adequate, and I am still not satisfied that is the case. The fact is that in a project of that size when one has a number of bodies all dealing with the same project and all, hopefully, going in the same direction, there needs to be a common membership, which is not the case. That is my opinion; it is not an expert opinion. With common membership then the various parts of the jigsaw, as it were, are all alert to what is happening all of the time.

There has been misleading information throughout the entire debate. I have not seen the PricewaterhouseCoopers, PwC, report at all and I have not read any part of it. Unfortunately, I had other things to do as well in recent days, as I am sure everybody else did. I believe the original estimate of the cost was wrong. It did not take into account the magnitude of the project and therein lies a flaw in the system. When any other projects are being undertaken we need to know the cost at the very beginning. There are prime cost, PC, sums added in all construction projects that would enable the committee, the Minister, the HSE or whatever the case may be, to come to a conclusion if something is going in the right direction or something is going wrong. It would appear from what I have heard of the PwC report that issues arose that should and could have been nobbled at a much earlier stage. What would happen as a result of that is another thing. It might well have brought a halt to the entire project, and I am not so sure that would be a good idea.

This is the second or third attempt at providing a children's hospital, site-wise, and in every other way. An attempt was made previously to superimpose it on the Mater Hospital but that did not work. There was much debate about it at the time but An Bord Pleanála made the decision in the end. A lot of money was wasted. A lot of money was spent on that particular endeavour. I asked questions at the time about whether the initial expenditure could be of benefit in the subsequent sites with a view to using whatever information we had gleaned from the first episode but it did not happen other than to a small extent.

We must make another decision as well. An attempt was made by the board and the HSE to curtail what looked like an overrun in comparison to the original estimates but at that stage it was probably too late. It would have caused a major hiccup and the project to be abandoned. That would not be in the interests of anybody, certainly not the interests of children or value for money, which is something with which this committee does not deal and nor should it, as we have a policy role. I cannot understand how it transpired, if a quantity surveyor's report was available at the very beginning, that the estimate for the original costing emerged, based on the information that was available at the time. Perhaps we could get more information on that.