Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----and what the pros and cons of those were, and there were many cons in terms of a greenfield site.

Regarding capital projects, Deputy Catherine Murphy will know that we added 250 beds to the acute hospital system last year. The service plan provides for another 140 to 150 to be added this year, and that will happen and will not be affected by this. However, we will need to find an extra €100 million because of the overruns this year and that will have to come out of capital budgets. Roughly €50 million will come from the capital budget of the Department of Health and roughly €50 million will come from the capital budgets of every other Government Department. We are currently working out how that can be done. The Deputy should bear in mind it is in the context of a capital budget of about €5 billion a year, so it is in the 1% or 2% territory. We anticipate it will mostly be achieved by postponing or delaying projects by two or three months rather than having to cancel any particular project but that has yet to be worked out.

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