Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Rural Independent Group for giving me time. This is the fifth time I have raised the national children's hospital in this House. I have asked many questions. I have got very few answers. I have put down many written questions to which I got a couple of answers, not many. It is a bit like trying to unravel the secret of Fatima. It is absolute nonsense that there is no transparency around what happened.

I have concentrated mostly on the form of contract, which was a joke and is the reason the Government has the overruns, but no one seemed to be interested in the contract. Moreover, the Government does not seem to be interested in giving answers on it. In one of the replies I received, I was told that stage 1, the below-ground stage, was a detailed design, and so it should have been. That was fine. In the second one we were told it was based on a remeasurable bill of quantities priced at the preliminary design tender rates. That is nonsense. One cannot do that. Who was responsible for that? Who made that decision? Will anyone be held to account for it? Did McCann FitzGerald advise the Government on it? Was it somebody else on the board who decided it? That question has to be answered by somebody.

Why was phase 1 not a stand-alone construct in order that BAM would not have the Government over a barrel for the second phase? Why will no one answer that question? I do not understand it. Doing the bill of quantities for phase 2, which is all the work above ground - the main work - and not doing it on a detailed design was madness. There is no logic to it and no one is telling me the reason.

The reply referred to a preliminary design. Was that initial design and feasibility or the developed design? It certainly was not a detailed design but there are no answers on that either. The numbers keep going up so the Government has no control over them. That is because of the format it has invented and come along with and no one has been held to account for it. It is absolute nonsense.

The Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform appeared before the Committee of Public Accounts last week. He said the bill of quantities was 95% sorted. It was not 95% sorted. He actually said in response to Deputy Jonathan O'Brien that "the complexity of the project meant that it was not possible to set out a detailed design". That is rubbish. He also stated: "The second issue is that we were given commitments relating to the approximate bill of quantities". By whom were the commitments given and what kind of commitments were they? Will anyone be held accountable for that? Was there a public benchmarking analysis prior to the tenders going out? I have asked that question a couple of times and no one has answered it. I do not understand why no one is answering any questions.

I would like to have 20 minutes to contribute. I have asked whether PwC was independent. How did it get the job? How was it procured? One should see the answers I received on this point. One answer, and one could not make this up, stated that prior to commencement - this is the Government talking - of the review, assurances were sought and received from PwC in relation to potential conflicts of interest. That is like asking the fox if the chickens will be all right with him tonight. If PwC was asked about a potential conflict of interest, there should have been a conflicts procedure process internally in PwC. How did it determine that it did not have a conflict of interest? Did it tell the Government? Can we see the minutes of that meeting? How did PwC give assurances to the State that it did not have a conflict of interest because it had a conflict of interest? It partially designed the contract we are debating.

Another response I got on the lack of independence of PwC stated that in January 2017, following a competitive tendering process, PwC was awarded a contract for external consultancy services in support of the HSE's programme for health service improvements. It further stated that the contract provides recounting for expertise to be drawn on as required.

This is a construction project. What, in God's name, do accountants know about construction? They did not have to be given this work. This was done on a framework agreement. PricewaterhouseCoopers, PwC, was drawn out of a framework agreement which had been put in place in 2017 and was not fit for purpose in this case. This is about construction and what BAM got up to with the increase in prices. It is about how the contract was done and how it was not done. It is about construction. PwC are accountants. It is a different area. It was providing money for friends that saw PwC get the job. This is nonsense.

There are many points I want to cover. Can we please get some answers? Why does the Government not have a go at being transparent about what really happened? Nobody is telling us what happened or answering the questions I put to them over the past three weeks. I am getting no answers. It is all being hidden under the covers. We are talking about half a billion euro of taxpayers' money being wasted. The Government does not have a clue where this will end up because of the form of contract it used. It has done it all wrong. Are McCann FitzGerald going to be held to account?

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