Government keeps on digging in children’s hospital overrun
THERE is a vast crater in St. James’s Hospital, and having dug themselves into this hole, the Government seems to have no choice but to keep digging to try to find a way out of the children’s hospital saga, Labour Party leader Brendan Howlin told the Dáil.
‘ This Fine Gael Government seems to have adopted a Celtic Tiger attitude towards overspending,’ he said. ‘Just ten months after telling us that the cost of the national children’s hospital on the St. James’s site was to be €938 million, Fine Gael is now telling us that the final cost could be €1.73 billion or more, nearly double the previous cost. As the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, has said, we are at the point of no return.’
Surely as the Minister overseeing public spending, Deputy Howlin said he would have received monthly, if not weekly, updates on the progress of a project of this scale and significance.
‘Why apparently did it take three months for the Minister for Health to inform the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform about major cost overruns in the flagship programme of the Department of Health?’ he asked.
‘How did the Government present a budget to this House at the end of last year that is already €100 million short in its capital programme?’
In reply, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said decades of promises will actually be delivered on by the Government, something that the children of Ireland need and deserve. ‘I appreciate that it is right and appropriate to talk about the cost and the cost overruns, but we should never forget the value of the project,’ he said. ‘By suspending it, it will be further delayed and cost even more.’
He said the Minister for Health was first made aware of an issue surrounding rising costs at the national children’s hospital in August. ‘He did the right and appropriate thing,’ he said.
‘He sought information, facts and figures before presenting the information to the Government. When I found out about it in November, around the same time as the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, I responded in the same way as others in this House, first, with disbelief in struggling to believe how the price had gone up again. Retendering would have delayed the project and probably saved nothing.’