Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The first issue the Deputy raised was that of the strike action happening at the moment. It is a very serious disruption for patients up and down the country. Tomorrow will see the second full-day strike of this week. Psychiatric nurses are also reducing their hours, and there is also an issue about GPs. We know that nurses are not taking this position lightly because we know how much they care about the patients they look after. In situations such as Storm Emma, we saw that they went above and beyond the call of duty to look after their patients. However, the Government does not take its position lightly either. We have to think about the potential outcomes that might arise if this cannot be resolved in an appropriate way. Contingencies have been put in place, which is important for people in the health system today. We have to think about how we can catch up on time that has been lost but we have done that before. We must bear in mind our responsibility to the public finances. We cannot jeopardise the current public service pay agreement. We cannot risk other strikes in other parts of the public sector and cannot endanger the important agreement we have at present, which is essential to the security of our public finances. It is true to say that it is important in the context of Brexit being on the near horizon; we are still working on contingency plans to deal with that issue. The belief of the Government is that we can find a resolution to this issue. It is very important that we do so quickly because of the escalation in action that is happening over the course of this week.

On the issue of the children's hospital, between the end of August or the beginning of September, when the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, was made aware that there was the potential for significant overrun with the capital costs of this project and November, when the figures finally crystalised, he was getting to the facts of the matter. He was not working on innuendo or what he might believe but sought to understand the scale of the problem. When he understood the scale of the problem, the situation was relayed on the same day to Cabinet colleagues, including the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. Work then began on what decision had to be made, how it would be made, and what the consequences of the decision might be. Since that decision was taken by Cabinet in December, we have discussed this issue publically. There has been full transparency and accountability around that, but there is also a process in place, including the work of the Joint Committee on Health, where the Minister is answering questions by Deputy Pearse Doherty's colleagues on this topic in detail. The process also includes the PwC report; the terms of reference for which were published yesterday evening. The process seeks to get very detailed answers about what kind of oversight was happening, who knew what and when they knew it, whether proper procedures were observed-----

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