Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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I will briefly return to the bike shelter and I echo my colleagues' comments. The Leas-Chathaoirleach and I have been around this committee the longest. The biggest issue we have ever dealt with is the national children's hospital. As regards commentary among the public, a €2.2 billion project is put in the ha'penny place by a bike shed out at the back of this building when it comes to the public's consciousness. All of us feel that because it is constantly brought up. It was brought up with me yesterday. It is brought up all the time.

Fundamentally, the OPW has undermined the public service and the way in which the public service spends money, when public sees a bike shed and sees how much it should cost. There are contractors who have publicly said they could have done eight of them for the same price. It is not comprehensible to people who are trying to manage budgets. There is an ongoing detrimental issue in public spending because of this where the public now must second guess projects all the bloody time. That is the impact of it. In some cases the works being done on projects are very valuable and very worthwhile. In some cases, they come in under what had been estimated, but this is the impact it has had. There is also the famous security hut.

My first question is: are there any other projects we need to know about? Let us clean the slate here. Is there anything else, or projects like this, that we need to know about as the Committee of Public Accounts? My colleague spoke about the science museum, which I am well aware of, because it came up during the last term in a previous committee I was on. Are there any other projects that jump out that we need to be aware of? If not, then we will just move on.