Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

The Minister mentioned accountability. I am not aware of anybody in the senior levels of the Civil Service who has ever lost his or her job because a project went over budget. I am not aware of anybody who has even been moved sideways.

I will give a couple of examples. We had a farce here where €2 million was spent on a Dáil printer nobody could fit in the door. We have the national children's hospital, which was promised for 2020 at a cost of €700 million, barring an asteroid hitting the planet. We do not have an opening date yet and it is 2024, with €2.25 billion being the cost. We have the Department of Health overspending on a property owned by Larry Goodman because it did not measure it properly. We had €22 million spent on ventilators that never worked. We had Government spending €50,000 housing the ventilators that do not work, then spending €500,000 going to court against a Chinese firm to try to get its money back. The HSE cyberattack was unbelievable. A parliamentary question I submitted on that showed the Taoiseach was spending more on press statements and public relations than was being spent on the cybersecurity centre, which did not even have an office or a national director. That cyberattack then cost well over €100,000. I do not see any accountability with any of those.

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