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

The PwC report on the very significant overspend on the national children's hospital represents a damning indictment of the Government's stewardship of the entire project. Red flags were missed, the public spending code was not adhered to, the project was poorly co-ordinated and controlled, there was fragmentation, poor communication and poor flow of information. That is all in the report. It also identifies a number of failures in the set-up, planning and budgeting of the national paediatric hospital project. It is a far cry from April 2016, when the then Minister for Health, the present Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, announced that it would cost approximately €650 million, including contingency and inflation. That €650 million has now risen to €1.7 billion with significant risks that it will rise further. The report outlines about six significant risks in the project relating to its budget, provisional sums, elements of the design yet to be finalised and inflation. If inflation goes up by 10%, there will be another €97 million increase. Construction inflation is currently at 7.1%. Other issues include schedule adherence and programme realignment.

When I asked the Taoiseach some time ago if he was confident that this would stay within €2 billion, he could not answer the question or give a definite view on that. The question that begs to be asked following the report is where were the Ministers for Public Expenditure and Reform and Health during all of this. They were clearly asleep at the wheel. They, along with the Taoiseach, made the glitzy announcements but challenged very little indeed. There was a change of governance in a letter in appendix G attached to the report. A new governance structure was established in May 2017. It is referred to in a letter, which I presume is from the Secretary General at the Department of Health. What led to that change of structure? Were the Ministers for Health and Public Expenditure and Reform alerted to that change of structure? There were problems emerging which were not shared. Did the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform know about it? I refer the Tánaiste to recommendation 11 of the report, which now states with regard to all future capital infrastructure projects, that "A central assurance and challenge function should be established within Government to provide consistent challenge to and review of major [public sector infrastructure] projects". That clearly suggests that there was no such challenge in Cabinet relating to this project. Most people would say that that challenge function is the role of the Ministers for Public Expenditure and Reform and Health. It is clear that no one challenged anything about this project. I would argue that there was too much politically invested in the project. The announcements were made but no one asked any hard questions at ministerial or Cabinet level. We see that in other projects too. With this extraordinary revelation of shambolic management of this project, where is the accountability for the Ministers for Health and Public Expenditure and Reform? Is it still their position that they were not alerted at any stage to any of the red flags that the report talks about, or to the range of failings identified in the report?

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