Carol Nolan demands debate on National Children's Hospital costs

Minister, as you are aware there are ongoing concerns around the costs of the National Children's Hospital. I would like to know that if your department has flagged any of those concerns with the Department of Health or any other government department. Thank you Deputy Nolan. As you are aware my department is responsible for the allocation of public funds across each area of government spending and to ensure that expenditure is managed by departments in line with these allocations. My department is also responsible for maintaining the national frameworks such as the public spending code within which departments operate to ensure appropriate accounting for and value for money and public expenditure. The responsibility for the management and delivery of investment projects within the agreed allocations and within the national frameworks rests with the individual sponsoring departments in each case. In addition, several measures are in place to help ensure that budgetary targets are met. The Department of Public Expenditure Reform is in constant communication with all departments and offices. It monitors their drawdown of capital funds from the Exchequer against the published capital expenditure profiles with information published monthly as part of the Exchequer statement. With regard to the health sector, all expenditure examined on a monthly basis through the Tripartite Health Budget Oversight Group, consisting of Deeper, the Department of Health and the HSE. This is in addition to the ongoing contact between the Health Finance Unit and the Health Vote section in Deeper relating to expenditure issues in the health sector. The Department of Health also reported a Project Ireland 2040 Delivery Board in relation to its national development plan delivery and its capital expenditure. This group meets six times per annum and consists of the secretaries-general of major capital spending departments as well as five external members. Last week, I published a budget for 2023 in which I allocated over €12 billion to departments to spend next year on investment in vital capital infrastructure projects. The Department of Health will receive almost €1.2 billion to enable them to plan and deliver their investment in capital projects in 2023. The Department of Health have also committed core sectoral capital allocations of €1.255 billion and €1.36 billion for 2024 and 2025 respectively under the National Development Plan. It is the responsibility of that Department to prioritise within these NDP commitments to deliver capital projects under its remit, including the National Children's Hospital. Thanks Minister. Thank you for your response. You mentioned oversight and you mentioned deeper there in your response, but I would like to know, has any concern been flagged? I know you mentioned oversight, but has any specific concerns been flagged over the cost and the rising expenditure of the hospital project? Minister, as you are aware, the rural independent group that I am part of gave the previous government an opportunity to change course with respect to the National Children's Hospital in March 2017 and March 2019, when my colleagues provided opportunities for a radical reassessment of the project. Government failed to take these opportunities and now we are on track for unprecedented levels of cost overruns and endless legal battles with contractors. Where was your department in terms of the oversight in regard to this issue? We have seen from reporting last week that a lot of the costs are down to the fact that the contracts were signed before any designs were even drawn up and that in itself was a recipe for disaster. We also know that there are now more than 700 claims lodged by various contractors against the project with the amount associated with those thought to be in excess of 300 million. The first point to make is that my department does not manage the capital projects of other departments. It is their responsibility in line with their legal obligations and the responsibility of the accounting officer to manage those projects. Arising from the lessons that had to be learned from the National Children's Hospital, the Public Spending Code was strengthened in 2019. I went further than that in the last year by bringing in a new external assurance process, which involves setting up a panel of external experts and also setting up a new major projects advisory group to advise my department in respect of major projects to come before us for approval. On the National Children's Hospital, as you know, back in 2018, the then government approved a capital budget of £1.433 billion. This included the capital costs for the main hospital at St James', the two outpatient departments and urgent care centres at Connolly and Talla campuses, equipment for the three sites and the construction of the car park and retail spaces. There were other elements that it did not include such as the integration and transfer of the services at the three children's hospitals to the new sites, ICT, a new electronic health records system and so on. But the figure approved by government was £1.433 billion. That amount has not yet been reached. Approximately £1.1 billion of that figure has been drawn down to date. That is as of the 20th of September. So about 76% of the approved budget has been drawn down at this point. And it is a matter for the department to manage the project. Gourmet Gutt. Minister, I thank you for your response again. But surely there is some intervention that you can make with the department given that we have £1.1 billion drawn down and that there are endless problems with the whole project. Will you accept that in order to be constructive here I am going to suggest that we have a debate on the real cost and service implications of this train wreck of a project and I would just ask if you could commit to that. I think it is very important when we are reaching such expenditure and obviously hitting so many problems with this project. And I suppose just to put it in context of what a billion euros of an overspend on this project could have paid for health alone, I was informed through a parliamentary question that the total cost of implementing the entire national cancer strategy between now and 2026 will be in the region of £840 million. I also know that the total net budget for adult and children's palliative care was just over £100 million. That still leaves us with £60 million that would provide homes to those who desperately need it. So it is serious amounts of money here that could have been saved. We need to refocus our attention on this project which has been allowed to run wild. And we need accountability and a meaningful debate. It is the only way forward. Will you accept that the rural independent group were right to demand a change of the course of action in both 2017 and 2019? And if the group had been listened to back then we would not be in the mess we are today, but would most likely have a functioning children's hospital that would serve everyone? But coming back to my core question, Minister, will you agree to a debate on this issue? Deputy, there are lots of opportunities for projects like this to be debated at the Health Committee here on the floor through topical issues and so on. It is not for me as Minister for Public Expenditure to commit to a debate on a project that has been managed by another department. As I said, the capital budget here was approved in 2018. Since then the Public Spending Code has been strengthened. I have introduced a new external assurance framework to strengthen the oversight procedures that are in place in respect of major capital projects. We have a live contract here that has to be managed. The priority is to get the hospital built and get the hospital open for the children of Ireland who urgently need it to be completed. The contractor is entitled to submit additional claims and many of them have been submitted. But the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board is also entitled to defend those claims. And they have been defending those claims. And I respect and support the work that they are doing. They need to conclude that work in the fullness of time and enable this hospital to be completed and to be opened. That is all I have to say. Thank you Minister. That is all I have to say on it. Good, thanks Minister. We know... . . . . . . . .