Children’s hospital scandal - Two fingers to accountability

London’s Crossrail development has been described as Europe’s biggest infrastructure project.

For almost a decade, a 1,000-tonne, 150-metre-long tunnelling machine has burrowed its way through a web of gas mains, Thames tributaries, building foundations, medieval graveyards, and water and gas pipes to make way for the new railway line.

The project is almost land-a-man-on-Mars complicated and, though its completion date was deferred late last year, it is on the immediate horizon. Funding of £15.9bn (€18.1bn) was agreed in October 2007, but a review in 2010 cut that to £14.8bn (€16.9bn).

A second review increased funding — a mixture of government, local authority and private — but it is still within the 2007 £15.9bn limit.

If what might be called the National Children’s Hospital Accelerator Matrix were applied to Crossrail, it would not carry passengers until at least 2033 and cost something north of €30bn. Heads, lots of them, would rightly roll.

There is hardly another project that has become such a national embarrassment, such a scandalous soak for scarce resources and — sadly, there’s more — such an eye-watering lesson on what all too often happens in the Land of No Consequences.

The Crossrail comparison may seem fatuous, but it is no less fanciful than the project management that has bedevilled what is on course, eventually, to become the most expensive hospital in the world.

That the project was influenced for political gain is beyond question, as is the fact that disagreement among the medical professionals about where it should be located contributed to the farce.

It’s 26 years since a children’s hospital based in Dublin was first proposed. As recently as 2014, it carried a price tag of €800m, but on Wednesday, an Oireachtas committee was warned by Fianna Fáil’s Stephen Donnelly that “when the dust settles, we won’t have much change from €2bn”.

Albert Reynolds was Taoiseach when this project was first discussed.

Since then, five men have succeeded him. Since then, scores of public servants have been involved in the runaway project, but not one has been censured or dismissed. Each has without intrusion enjoyed the benefits of a senior public position.

This absence of accountability, this two fingers to the rest of society must end — and preferably before someone decides to build a Crossrail under Dublin.