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

I thank the Taoiseach for his reply. In recent months, it has become clear that the system of Cabinet committees has been almost completely sidelined. Even on vital issues such as health and housing, the relevant committees meet infrequently. The Taoiseach has justified this by saying that he prefers to have discussions at Cabinet level. In doing this, he has cut out the entire tier of interdepartmental work that underpins Cabinet committees and has removed expert voices from the discussions. As we have seen from the systematic failure to deliver targets on time or within budget, the move to a more superficial politicians-only focus for discussions is clearly not working. Given the utter failure of the Minister for Health to manage either his short-term budget or long-term projects or the fact that Ireland was not ready for a no-deal Brexit in March, despite repeated claims to the contrary, does the Taoiseach agree that his experiment in downgrading the role of Cabinet committees has not worked and should be reversed?

The last time we discussed the Cabinet committee on infrastructure we were told that capital projects were being tightly managed and that proof of this was the publication of a major projects monitor, with regular updates. When checked yesterday, however, this major capital projects monitor was still doggedly holding to the idea that the national children's hospital would cost €916 million. There was no provision whatsoever made for the national broadband plan, NBP, and there were no examples of the Taoiseach's often referenced projects which are supposedly coming in well under budget. The only adjustments since early last year refer to projects where the pre-2018 spending was higher than predicted. Given the time and money the Government spent marketing the NDP last year and the public money it keeps spending to aid Fine Gael in targeted electoral areas, the public deserves an honest and comprehensive update on the costs and timelines in the NDP. This is particularly relevant in the context of the memorandum from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform on the NBP, which states that approximately €1.5 billion will be required for broadband and an additional €345 million for the children's hospital, neither of which have been provided for.

At every stage we were promised that this would be the most transparent and best managed plan ever. How is this compatible with the reality of what has been happening?

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