Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I agree with that entirely. There is a lot of talk about learning lessons. Every Department that comes before the committee is learning lessons from some previous debacle, yet new debacles are always beginning. None of those is bigger than that relating to the national children's hospital. At some point, someone - whether it is this committee or someone else - will need to look at how we got this so wrong on so many different levels such that the outlay to the taxpayer was far beyond what anybody would have dared suggest at the outset. I have no doubt that one of the problems that will be identified is the level of secrecy and lack of transparency throughout the process. In order for this committee to be vindicated, we need to continuously record our dissatisfaction with the way in which information is being withheld. This correspondence from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform informs the committee that the Department of Health has stated that the information relating to costings is commercially sensitive. I propose that we write back to the Department of Health again to express our view that the information should be provided to the committee and requesting that this should be done, if for no other reason than to ensure that it will be on the public record that the committee did everything to try to have throughout the process the accountability that has been sadly lacking.