Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy has asked quite a lot of detailed questions. I will try to respond to them. First, Mr. Paul Quinn is the Government chief procurement officer and head of the Office of Government Procurement. Mr. Quinn was appointed in a personal capacity to the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board for a five-year term in 2013 by the then Minister for Health, the now Senator James Reilly. He was reappointed in 2018 by the current Minister for Health, Deputy Harris. Members of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board, in line with the code of practice for the governance of State bodies and the board's own code of governance, have a duty to the board in the first instance, a responsibility to act collectively in decision-making and communication and an obligation to observe its confidentiality arrangements. The Department of Health, as the accountable Department, established reporting and governance arrangements for the project through which the board provided regular updates to it on the project. The Department of Health has already set out those governance arrangements in detail along with the timeline of when the board alerted it to the cost escalation and when the Department of Health subsequently communicated the new cost projections to the Government and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. In other words, there were agreed codes of communication, both on the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board and also between that board and the accountable Department, that is, the Department of Health. From my notes those codes and that process were followed.

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