Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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I welcome the witnesses. I have just come from a long meeting of the Joint Committee on Health, which was debating the national children's hospital so it is fresh in my mind. We could speak on this subject for at least two days on the basis of the information we have available. Much misinformation prevails with regard to the national children's hospital. People fail to realise the scale of the project. Once upon a time, it was described as the most expensive hospital in the world. It is not but the scale is very considerable. Given the scale and multiplicity of technical suppliers, including for electrical and medical requirements, the variations and the uncertain period between the signing of the contract and now, do the witnesses think there could have been any great deviation from what we are dealing with now in terms of cost? A firm of accountants said that some procedures were not followed. I have my doubts as to whether there would have been a different outcome if procedures were followed differently. It is a very big project. It is popular for everybody to say the State was the loser because certain procedures were not followed, it was inefficient and the hospital is in the wrong place which, incidentally, is not and cannot be an issue with regard to costs because it is already there.

People rake over the coals again and again, saying the outcome could have been different. I do not think the outcome could have been different. In the opinion of the witnesses, could the outcome have been vastly different from what we have if the codes of conduct we have now had been in place? Initially only an guesstimate of a cost of €650 million was available. Then we had the actual contract price, which was allegedly an increase on what was a guesstimate. A guesstimate is still only a guesstimate. It does not carry any weight. We now have a situation where we are coming towards the end of the project and consideration will have to be given to the various factors that have affected the delivery, such as Covid and the war in Ukraine, with regard to supplies and transport. Some components have increased in value by up to 45% because of inflation and for other reasons.

I therefore ask, where everybody has his or her own opinion as to what the project represents, that we should be careful not to damage the concept of the project by downgrading it on the basis that it was a failed project from the start.