There have been few new Brexit related developments since yesterday and the House will have a chance to discuss the current situation later on today. Last year the Government promised that one of the key responses to Brexit would be Project Ireland 2040 and the capital plans associated with that document. However, yesterday amid all the drama, the Minister for Finance attended a meeting of the Select Committee on Budgetary Oversight and revealed that it would be necessary to change many of the key capital plans in terms of both start dates and possibly their scale, owing to rising costs and labour shortages. He spoke specifically about the lack of skilled workers in construction and mentioned electrical engineers in particular. He spoke about the challenge of capital projects across Europe and the competition for labour and contractors. He told the committee that as we move through 2019, this will have to be a factor in capital project decisions that are made and that because we are seeing higher tender prices than expected, this is having an impact on the public budget. He then outlined a review process.

At the same time yesterday, the chairman and project director of the new children's hospital were attending a meeting of the Joint Committee on Health, outlining the disaster that is the management of that particular project. The new hospital was originally meant to cost €650 million but it may now cost €2 billion, if not more. What was very clear yesterday, as was pointed out by my colleague, Deputy Donnelly, is that those in charge of the project do not understand the costs or where this will end up. The chairman and the director were unable to outline the premium or the extra costs for building the hospital on the confirmed site. We are now looking at a potential overrun of between €1 billion and €1.5 billion. That money has to come from other capital projects, placing additional pressure on capital budgets, particularly within health.

We were told that Project Ireland 2040 was the great panacea for all of our ills but it has turned out to be built on a hill of beans. How did the Government allow this happen? Why did the Minister for Health fall asleep at the wheel while costs went catastrophically out of control? What other key projects in the capital plan are under threat and what launch dates are under threat because of cost overruns? By how much is the national broadband plan currently overrunning, for example? Will key projects such as Dublin metro run to schedule? When will the review announced by the Minister for Finance yesterday be completed? Will it be published with the same fanfare as Project Ireland 2040? I doubt it.

I did not hear the Minister for Finance's contribution yesterday but I expect that it was the kind of contribution one would expect of him, outlining the practical realities of how to manage a plan to spend €114 billion over ten years in order to significantly improve infrastructure across the country, including schools, hospitals, roads, flood protection systems and so on. This Government has, for the first time, outlined a ten year plan for capital expenditure which will, of course, face challenges along the way. Those challenges will require review mechanisms and will require us to respond to issues such as skills shortages, particularly in construction. This is particularly problematic at the moment in the context of housing challenges, what we need to build and how quickly we need to do it.

It would be very strange if a Minister for Finance was not outlining the challenges we face in delivering the potential of a plan with the level of ambition contained in Project Ireland 2040. That document is a 20-year planning framework within which we have outlined in detail how we want to spend capital and where we want to spend it over the first ten years. In that way, we have medium-term to long-term planning in place so that we can deal with the kinds of challenges that may arise, including construction cost inflation, the skills we need to deliver on that or the planning systems that we may need to alter, change, improve or amend to get the work done. That is the whole point of ten-year planning. The idea that the Government would announce €114 billion of expenditure and that there would be no challenges in terms of adapting, changing and improving delivery systems over a decade long period, particularly in the context of factors like contingency planning around Brexit, with which we are currently dealing, or other pressures on the system, is unrealistic. The Deputy should not try to create the impression that a hugely ambitious development plan for the country is not deliverable because there are some challenges and blockages that we need to overcome, which was always going to be the case if we were going to deliver on the potential of the Project Ireland 2040 plan. The Deputy is not dealing with reality.

The only person not dealing with reality this morning is the Tánaiste with an answer like that. We are not even one year into this plan. I accept it is a ten-year plan, or possibly even a 20-year plan but one year into it and one project alone is overrunning its initial cost by €1.5 billion. The national children's hospital is going to be, on a per-bed basis, twice as expensive as the most expensive hospital ever built in the world.

Madness.

This is only one project in the plan. What about all of the other projects? How much is the national broadband plan going to overrun the budget announced for it last February? Projects are overrunning their costs. These are not just practical difficulties. The Project Ireland 2040 document was published with great fanfare, roadshows and spin but is has now been exposed as completely lacking in substance. The commitments made to communities around the country are now under threat. The commitments to capital improvements as a response to Brexit are now under threat because of the lack of planning and foresight in the first place. There was a rush to publish the document but there was no planning behind it and no substance within it. The national children's hospital is the first project to expose this lack of both planning and substance. How many other projects with the Project Ireland 2040 document are in the same position?

Fianna Fáil's record on the national children's hospital is not one to write home about.

Never mind our record.

The children's hospital was being planned long before the Project Ireland 2040 plan was signed off. The Minister for Health advised the Government in December that the overall cost to complete the national children's hospital project was €1.4333 billion-----

What happened to €650 million?

-----which is €450 million more than advised to Government in April 2017, when the Government gave the green light for the construction of the hospital. A full €319 million of additional costs relate to construction costs and the balance of €131 million, which includes €50 million in VAT, relates to costs associated with staff, consultants, planning, design team fees, risk and contingency planning and so on. It is very clear that the Government is not happy with the fact that the cost of this hospital-----

What other projects will be affected?

-----has clearly increased.

Yet the Government did nothing about it.

There are many other projects that are being delivered on time and within budget.

The capital expenditure programme that we are now managing is increasing by around €1.4 billion this year alone. This represents a 24% increase in capital expenditure in one year and is based on our recognition of the under-investment in capital for the last decade, for reasons that we all understand. Of course, as we ratchet up and increase expenditure we must keep costs under control and the national children's hospital is a good example of that not happening. However, there are many other examples of costs being managed well and projects being delivered on time.