Seanad debates

Tuesday, 5 February 2019

An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business

 

2:30 pm

Photo of Lorraine Clifford LeeLorraine Clifford Lee (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to discuss today the outrageous and spiralling cost of the new children's hospital. I have been in north County Dublin for the last number of days knocking on doors and talking to people and this was the only matter they wished to talk about. It is on everybody's lips. It is outrageous that we are still not getting the full story and the Government's credibility has been shattered by this. It is clear that its timelines are not adding up and we need to immediately know what happened. It is not good enough for the current Minister for Finance or the Minister for Health to tell us what is going on, this concerns successive Ministers. There are clearly some serious issues involved where costs were not tied down, the contract was not properly costed at the start, and there are clear governance issues at play here. The stories are not adding up and people are getting very angry out there. We need to know what is going on and we need to stop taking people for fools.They want to know what is going on. Nobody questions the need for this hospital. We all know it needs to happen as soon as possible but we need to take control of the costs. It is clear Fine Gael has mismanaged the largest capital project in the country but it has a history of mismanaging large capital projects, such as the fiasco with Irish Water and broadband roll out. There is now more mismanagement of the public purse and people are sick of it. They want to see their hard-earned taxes going to projects and not being wasted. We are now spending half a million on a review of something that should not have happened in the first place. We will apparently have this PwC report in March but we need to see the terms of reference of this report immediately and to get cross-House and cross-party agreement on them. Fianna Fáil wants the terms of reference to include identification of areas where savings can be made. The project is ongoing and nobody is calling for it to be stopped but we need to identify areas within the project as it stands on which costs can be saved.

The Taoiseach and Minister for Finance need to publish where they will cut the capital expenditure in health over the coming years to finance the spiralling costs of the children's hospital. Projects throughout the country will have to be cut back or cancelled. Fine Gael is able to announce health projects but we want to see immediate announcements of what projects it will cancel because it could not manage the public purse. Fine Gael likes to say that it has great prudence and can be trusted with the public purse. Significant mismanagement has happened under Fine Gael in recent years and the public is outraged by it. I want a proper and sincere debate in this House about the outrageous situation with the national children's hospital.

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