Maire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Not quite years.

Where does one start? The scenarios presented to us regarding ever-increasing costs, or the runaway train, are not so much fairytale-like as nightmarish. The public have found them incredible. The train has no driver. The Minister is the driver but seems to have taken the day off sick because the train keeps going. I hope the brakes have now been applied and that some prudence has been exercised to address the waste of public money. I am not saying the children's hospital itself is a waste. The mothers, fathers and children of Ireland need it but do not need the waste arising from the ever-increasing costs, which should have been capped at the beginning. The public purse is being robbed time and again. Perhaps we are used to it but this time the public was just gobsmacked by the extent of the increase.I also juxtapose the optics of a few weeks ago of nurses on the picket line at St. James's demanding something that would have cost perhaps €260 million and standing under the shadow the foundations of the children's hospital that we believed then would cost at least over €1 billion, if not, as many say, over €2 billion. That was not lost on the people. They were able to do the maths when they looked at those images.

I refer to the conflicting timelines, unanswered questions, and who knew what and when. It is incredibly important for this to be certain for accountability. It was simply not credible that the Minister did not discuss the catastrophic overrun with his Cabinet colleagues earlier than November last given that in May the joint construction and finance subcommittee noted that the capital programme for the project would have to be submitted before mid-September to ensure funding prior to budget. If that was the case, they would have known the overrun much earlier. However, it did not happen. The explanations thus far are unsatisfactory. In simple terms, the Minister and the HSE still need to explain why this occurred.

There is loads going on with this hospital.