Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I am trying to figure this out. I want to go back a bit and figure out where the buck stops. As some of the members alluded to earlier, there is also a national maternity hospital to be built. I think we all accept that there has been substantial inflation in the wider economy and in the construction sector given forces beyond our control like war and Covid but the point is about us not being able to stop this from happening in future and us continuing to get into large-scale projects with tens of thousands of moving parts. From previous answers here, and I am trying to depersonalise this, Mr. Gunning has not been able to hold them to account in regard to the number of workers on site, which impacts on timelines, or costs. There will be claims, and I have accepted that here in the past, but my God, I refer to the number of them and the amount they are coming in at. We know there are high value claims, and the witnesses have alluded to that in the past. High value claims could be €10 million or they could be €100 million. I know the witnesses have to be careful and I do not expect them to put a figure on that here today but the taxpayer is left wide open here. We have had no penalties to date. We know the contractor has not complied with the work programme. We know from previous hearings of this committee that only a fraction of the workers who should have been on site were there at any given time. We know the original completion dates have been missed by a country mile. We know the Government has had to put in what is called an enhanced budget of €0.5 billion and now we have a completion date of February 2025 for substantial completion of the building. Given what has gone on, is that date realistic? Be realistic.