PAC chair wants to quiz BAM on children's hospital costs

The chair of the Public Accounts Committee wants BAM to appear before them to answer questions on the rising cost of the National Children’s Hospital.

Sean Fleming has also confirmed that he will facilitate a special expanded sitting of his committee to allow four other committees probe secretary general of the Department of Public Expenditure, Robert Watt, on the €450m overrun. While Health Minister Simon Harris is expected to survive a Sinn Féin motion of no-confidence on Wednesday, the issue is likely to rumble on.

Mr Watt is due to appear before PAC next month and Mr Fleming is now pushing for a super-sitting to avoid “unnecessary duplication”.

“I am proposing now that we see if we can put the mechanism in place to bring either representatives of each of the four committees or the four full committees together in one hearing,” said Mr Fleming.

However, health committee chairman Michael Harty yesterday claimed that it would still be “much more appropriate “ for Mr Watt to attend his committee.

Mr Harty said: “We issued four invitations and he said it was not necessary for him to appear in front of the Health Committee because the secretary general of the Department of Health was the accounting officer in relation to health, we argued that a €450m overspend on the hospital had to be approved by DPER, there was a member of DEPR on the board of the hospital who didn’t report the overspending.”

Asked if he would be inviting construction firm BAM in to answer questions, Mr Fleming said the public would be interested in what they have to say.

“I think there has been at least 20 hours of Dáil debate and committee debate on this and when you think of it from the public’s point of view, we have only heard from the minister, the senior officials and the State side, we haven’t heard from the other side,” Mr Fleming told RTÉ’s This Week.

Attacking some senior civil servants, Mr Fleming said some departments are well prepared and fully briefed when they come before the PAC but “there are three or four other departments, big ones, Health, Education, and Justice, that don’t come prepared and are not on top of their brief and don’t have the answers that they should have.”