Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will respond. PricewaterhouseCoopers, PwC, has published what it has available. It has published its own conclusion. The Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, and I independently reached the same conclusion where, in advance of this matter becoming as difficult and public as it has, we evaluated the different options available to us. We differ from Deputy Wallace because our view is that if the project had gone out to tender there is no guarantee that the costs would have been any lower and this projectwould have taken even more years to complete. We would be in front of the Dáil this evening dealing with a difficulty relating to money that has already been spent with no hospital constructed and no certainty regarding costs in the future. Those were the reasons that we believed this was the right decision to make.

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