Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister has mentioned the Government's responsibility to the public finances. Where was its responsibility or that of the Minister when it came to the overrun on the national children's hospital, running to €500 million of taxpayers' money? Where was the responsibility of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform when it came to one of those major capital projects that has now been beset by massive overruns? The Minister has spoken about the Government's responsibility when it comes to nurses but when it comes to a capital project such as this, it is clear that both Ministers were out of their depth, asleep at the wheel and kept in the dark by senior officials within their own Departments.

We learned in The Irish Timesthat the assistant Secretary General told the board in May that it had to go to the Government. It is incredible that the assistant Secretary General would not have told his own Minister that there was a serious overrun. It is worse that the Minister, Deputy Harris did not once, over August, September or October, a time when he was in direct negotiations with the Minister for Finance around a Supplementary Estimate for the Department of Health worth hundreds of millions of euro and a budget for 2019, tell the Minister for Finance that there was an overrun on this project. This Minister is out of his depth and not just on this issue. It is the fact that he has forced tens of thousands of nurses to take to the streets. It is the fact that people cannot go to their GPs today because they are on strike and are protesting outside these gates. It is a fact that people cannot get beds in our hospitals. It is a fact that we have hundreds of thousands of people-----

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