Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 25 September 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Engagement with Office of Public Works

1:30 pm

Photo of Richard Boyd BarrettRichard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

It should have been. Lastly, we have heard today in a different context that the board for developing the national children's hospital accused the main contractor of trying to extract every single cent it possibly could from the State. Is there an element of that in all of this, given the extraordinary costs? All the people doing the work, whether they are this medium-term group or outside contractors, were presumably in it to make a few bob. Everything was outsourced to commercial businesses who were also out to make a few bob. The consequence is an incredibly and shockingly expensive bike shed. Are we looking into whether there was profiteering going on here? Were they just extracting every cent because they knew this was the public purse and if it is the public purse, they can bump up the prices?

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