Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Nash asked about any new financial controls or reforms that may have been put in place. He referred to the national children's hospital. He is absolutely right to ask that question. There was a gross overspend in respect of the national children's hospital. We have a substantial number of large capital projects planned, by which I mean those valued at more than €100 million, under the national development plan. I have no wish to see a second national children's hospital-style event take place. With that in mind, there was a report by PwC last year on what went wrong with the project. That report contained specific recommendations about reforms to be made. Included in those was that governance had to be improved, risk-sharing had to be improved and there had to be better analysis. Specifically, PwC also pointed out that the system whereby the contracting body was also the body that monitored projects was not good enough. Whoever commissions a huge project costing more than €100 million cannot also be responsible for monitoring whether that project is on track. There has to be some independent external review all the way through of the cost of these projects. That unit is the investment projects and programmes office, IPPO, which is within the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. It will be reviewing and providing ongoing control of costs on major capital projects.

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