Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

During the informal engagement with the Portuguese Prime Minister, Mr. Costa, did the Taoiseach have an opportunity to ask him how the Portuguese had managed to build an 875-bed hospital for under €400 million? The Portuguese are well known for being very good contractors. Given the pickle the Government has been in because of the extraordinary cost of the national children's hospital, did it occur to the Taoiseach to obtain some friendly advice from another European country on how to manage costs? The issue was underlined again this morning in one of the newspapers which reported that HSE internal documents from the estates department showed that as far back as last May the head of estates in the HSE had made it clear that the budget figures for the children's hospital would have to be available for inputting into the budget last October. That would be the normal practice with which I am familiar. Big capital budgets must be considered in the context of the overall budget. This makes a nonsense of what the Minister for Health has asserted, that the children's hospital budget had no bearing on the overall budget announced last autumn. It is simply not credible to most people who are experienced in how government works in this country.

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