Leo backs Harris – but is it enough to save him?
Health Minister to speak in Dáil next week about Children’s Hospital crisis
THE Taoiseach is firmly backing his Health Minister in the row over the escalating cost of the National Children’s Hospital.
It has not stopped pressure mounting on Simon Harris as Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin urged him to apologise to the Dáil.
Leo Varadkar yesterday insisted he had total confidence in Mr Harris.
His support came despite calls for Mr Harris to resign as it emerged he had been informed the project was €191million over budget last August and that the main contractor was looking for another €200million.
Speaking at the Dáil Health committee on Wednesday Mr Harris had said he ‘didn’t know accurate figures until November 9.’ Reports yesterday revealed he knew as long ago as August the hospital was €191million over budget.
Mr Martin yesterday said he does not find Mr Harris’s explanations on his handling of the information in relation to the cost overruns ‘credible’ and said the minister needs to ‘correct’ and ‘apologise to the Dáil’.
Sinn Féin has called upon Mr Martin and his party ‘to make clear whether they have confidence’ in the embattled minister and have asked if Fianna Fáil ‘will move or support a confidence motion in this regard’.
But Mr Martin told Kfm yesterday: ‘In my view, it’s easy to put down motions of confidence and ministers can resign.
‘But… there is a fundamental issue then that still needs to be resolved, and there is a danger that when you get that event that you are talking about, the whole issue disappears, a chapter closes. A chapter can’t close on this prematurely in terms of the truth coming out in relation to the children’s hospital overspend and also in relation to why there was this secrecy between August and November.
‘The Government needs to reflect on the situation and in particular the Fine Gael party needs to reflect on the minister himself.’
Despite this senior backbench Fianna Fáil TDs – speaking in personal capacity – have demanded the Minister resign with one saying the Confidence and Supply Agreement with Fine Gael should be axed immediately.
Mr Harris this week told an Oireachtas Health Committee he did not know the accurate figures of the overrun until November 9 and denied he misled the Dáil when answering a parliamentary question last September when he said the ‘capital expenditure to date is in line with expected expenditure’. It was confirmed shortly before Christmas the project would cost in the region of €1.4billion, spiralling upwards from the previously approved figure of €983million.
Sligo-Leitrim TD Marc MacSharry said yesterday: ‘Personally speaking, Confidence and Supply should be terminated immediately. The people have had enough.’
The Fianna Fáil deputy said this arrangement, which was last December extended until 2020, is ‘no longer sustainable and certainly Minister Harris must go’.
‘He and the Government have treated the people like fools. They concealed information from the Dáil and Fianna Fáil in the budgetary process,’ he said.
‘We all want to be responsible, given Brexit uncertainties but the game is up. If aspects of Brexit negotiations must be delayed to facilitate essential domestic action here then so be it. Nothing can proceed without us.’
Memorandums released late on Thursday called into question Mr Harris’s assertion in recent weeks he did not have ‘accurate figures’ for how much the project was going over budget until November or that he knew it could reach ‘several hundred million euro’.
It showed he was informed of potential overruns of €391million late last August but the Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe was not informed until after Budget negotiations were completed.
The Health Minister has consistently said these figures he was supplied with then were estimates and said he wanted a final figure before the issue was escalated or decisions were made.
On RTÉ Prime Time on Thursday about the August 27 memo, he said the figure was ‘very much an estimate’ at the time and that he was not furnished with the complete figures until November 9, the same day as the Taoiseach.
He also rejected the allegation he knew the project had overrun by €391million.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald yesterday said her party ‘has no confidence in Minister Harris. His position is untenable in the face of mounting crises in our health services’.
Yesterday Mr Varadkar said Mr Harris will speak in the Dáil next week and said he didn’t want to ‘pre-empt’ what he would say but did acknowledge the scandal has for some people ‘damaged their faith and confidence in the Government that I lead and our ability to manage their finances’.
The Taoiseach said he has full confidence in Mr Harris and said the scandal now appeared to be ‘about who told what to whom, when, rather than matters of substance. They are matters of process’.
Mr Varadkar said that if Mr Harris had told him ‘earlier about the emerging overruns, I would have told him to do exactly what he did: to get to the bottom of it minimise the overrun, found out what the reasons were and that is what we did’.
Mr Harris’s spokeswoman last night said he ‘has been upfront and transparent about his knowledge of the National Children’s Hospital overrun’.
She said: ‘He has spent nine hours in the Health committee discussing the subject over the past two weeks. He has released all documents sent to him regarding the overrun.
‘Minister Harris believes he acted appropriately in identifying the scale of the problem and when it was clear, he brought it to the attention of the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance.
‘As he outlined yesterday, he does not believe it was his job to release partial information but to make decisions based on the facts available to him. The Minister has never shirked from his duties to the Oireachtas.’
Knew in August about rising cost ‘He has acted appropriately’