Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The ongoing debacle around the national children's hospital would make one despair. It is not only the children's hospital. One must despair at the State's ability to deliver a major infrastructure project some way on budget and on time. Successive Governments have failed to do that and to have basic respect for public money down through the years. When the Office of Government Procurement was established and a head was appointed, people thought this would make a difference but it has not. Over recent years, people on this side of the House tried to get the Minister and his colleagues to focus on the shambles that the children's hospital was becoming in relation to the cost overruns and the delays. On an ongoing basis the Minister and the Taoiseach put forward the rationale for a modern new children's hospital. No one is disputing that. Everyone agrees that we desperately need a modern children's hospital that can meet the needs of children living in Ireland. There was a lack of honesty around the failure to address the issue and to contain costs. The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, IFAC, has been very vocal on this. It has drawn attention to the standout issue, the national broadband plan. Second only to that is the national children's hospital where the overrun was estimated at €983 million last year. That represented a 94% cost overrun. IFAC has been very clear on the reasons for these overruns. It said that they displayed: "weak leadership by planners who lack experience in large projects, which can lead to major changes throughout the project cycle". We saw how this happened with the children's hospital. I agree that Dr. Jimmy Sheehan was very clear about the right kind of approach that must be taken where the full specification needs to be agreed and nailed down at the beginning. Unfortunately that was not the approach taken. There was a rush to deliver the project by this Government and therefore, adequate attention or care was not paid to ensure that the initial specification was got right.

IFAC also referred to "conflicts of interest in decision making by different stakeholders in the public and private domains". I also agree with that. It said there was a failure by Government to recognise that it is not playing around with some sort of slush fund: it is public money that the Government is spending on the public's behalf.

The Minister has a duty to ensure the money is spent properly. There seems to be a cavalier approach to public money and there was nonsense spoken to the effect that this would not have an impact on other projects. Of course, it is having and will in future have a major impact on public projects. There is currently a cost overrun of €500 million and the likelihood is that this will double. We are now looking at a position where essential funding that was supposed to be provided for other capital projects will simply not be available.

The other point I will make relates to Mr. Paul Quinn, the head of the Office of Government Procurement. I raised this in February and at the time the Taoiseach misled the House. I made that very clear at the time. He said Mr. Quinn could not divulge the issues associated with the ballooning cost of the children's hospital because he was bound by-----

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