Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach will remember that one of the five communication priorities for Government which he announced early last year was the promotion of the national children's hospital. He put in place a special budget in his own Department for this matter. When challenged on this in the Dáil, he repeatedly said that advertising of the children's hospital and the national development plan, NDP, in general was essential, because the public needed to be informed about what was being done with their money. Depending on what timeline one starts from, there is an overspend of anything up to €400 million if it is last year, and nearly €700 million more from the Taoiseach's time as Minister for Health. In terms of delayed projects and the need to completely revisit costing assumptions, can the Taoiseach tell us when he intends to update the list of claims and projects he published last year for the NDP? On the health capital plan alone, a combination of health capital inflation and new specifications on safety and technology will apply to the entire acute hospital building programme, not just to children's hospital. At best it is insulting to the public to claim that nothing will change in the NDP and that everything will be done as promised. The attempt to only talk about re-profiling this year is the exact opposite of the openness that he has repeatedly promised and which justified huge marketing budgets. Can he give us a simple commitment to publish immediately an updated national development plan list of projects and timings? I can list a whole range of projects for which we are still waiting timelines. One gets the sense that there is a real lack of precision on what was announced last year.

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