Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The minutes that have been released for the meeting of the steering group in May outline all of the options that body was considering in moving the national children's hospital project forward. Because the capital expenditure figures for this year had already been determined as part of Ireland 2040, the vast majority of the engagement I had with all colleagues o n budget 2019 was on the issue of current expenditure. I will repeat what I said before. In dealing with a project of this size, for me to do the kind of work I now have to do, the key issue would have been to understand the exact figure about which we were talking. What we can see is that within the Department of Health that was exactly the work they were doing. They were trying to understand why it had developed. From the moment the Minister for Health was notified - he has outlined the timeline - he has shown what he did to try to interrogate the figure and deal with it. He did the work I would have asked him to do. I am now responsible for how we can include it in our plans for this year from a capital point of view.

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