Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It sounds as if one value-for-money engineering exercise was completed and identified savings of €20 million which, in the context of construction costs of €1.433 billion, represents a saving of 1.4%. The national children's hospital is a big glass doughnut with a massive garden on the roof. As anyone who has ever built a wall or an extension or watched a Dermot Bannon television programme knows, curves are expensive while straight lines are less so. That is why most buildings are constructed using straight lines. Doughnuts are not a good use of space, which is why none of us lives in a glass doughnut-shaped house. Such houses are expensive and are not a good use of available space. The design of the hospital looks to be extraordinarily expensive. It is a big glass doughnut with curves everywhere. The whole building is curved; even the roof is curved. Why was no work done to identify design changes that could be made that would save money so that the services provided within the building could be protected?

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