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

I thank the Deputy for her question. I am heartened by the newfound interest of Sinn Féin in taxpayers' money. This is the party that regularly before the budget every year proposes €2 billion to €3 billion in extra taxes to be imposed on workers and on businesses.

It proposes an extra €2.3 billion every year, not €400 million spread over three or four years. It wants to impose an extra €2,000 million on taxpayers and businesses every year in the form of tax increases. Sinn Féin is no friend of the taxpayer. Let nobody in the Chamber have any doubt about that.

Accountability is about accepting responsibility for one's decisions, actions and perhaps in some cases inaction. The Minister, Deputy Harris, the Government and I, as head of Government, accept responsibility for underestimating the cost of this project. Accountability is not about giving in to the baying mob, witch hunts and the almost weekly demand for a head, any head, somebody's head. Who is next? That is not accountability in my view.

We should not forget the value and benefits of this project, not just to taxpayers, but to our children, who make up 25% of our population, as well as their children and their children's children. This will be a state-of-the-art children's hospital - not the most expensive hospital in the world but certainly one of the best. It will be a truly national facility - born digital and connected to paediatric units and hospitals all over the country. It will have 380 single rooms with infection control, a place for parents to stay overnight, a 60-bed ICU block, 22 theatres where we now have 14, five MRI machines and room for two more where we only have two at the moment, 20 ultrasound rooms, academic centres, parent accommodation and research centres. This is truly a project of enormous value. Yes, Government and its agencies underestimated the cost of this project. We got that wrong. It will cost more than we thought it would but nobody is saying it can do it any cheaper or any faster so we have taken the decision to go ahead with it and build it and we shall do so.

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