Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I think everybody in the country is completely shocked at what has happened with the cost profile for the national children’s hospital project. There has to be something deeply wrong with the arrangements the Minister has outlined if the cost overruns that have been experienced happened and nobody from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform which is charged with overseeing public expenditure to prevent a further collapse of the economy saw himself or herself as able or required, or saw it as appropriate, to tell the Minister about what was happening. Moreover, there are further revelations in today's newspapers that, in fact, the head of estates in the Health Service Executive who is on various committees dealing with the national children's hospital made it very clear as far back as last May that there were serious problems with cost overruns, yet it seems the civil servant on the board did not do anything. The Minister's colleague, the Minister for Health, who sat across from him at the Cabinet table decided he did not have to tell him. That cuts against the grain of everything that happens at budget time, not just in the context of current but also capital expenditure.

See this speech in context