Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I appreciate that but the costs when this hospital was first mooted are unrecognisable from what they are today. I understand that there are physical changes - we saw this when we were on site - and I accept that needs in the design have changed as well. Mr. Devine made the point earlier about the 23,000 new drawings and so on. I appreciate that things change. Anyone who has been involved in construction projects - big or small, residential or otherwise - will appreciate how things change. In terms of the change of the cost of this build, however, the Committee of Public Accounts has to question the underlying reason for the sizable difference. Even as we sit here, two years on from my own engagement with the witnesses, we still cannot put a final figure on what this project will cost – not even a ballpark figure – because it has just ballooned. That is not to say that this project is not needed or warranted. That is certainly not the case because we all want this, as I have said before. From tendering right through to the initial design, we have got the cost so wrong. Is it our tendering process that is wrong or was it the actual price tag in the initial phase?