I listened to the Tánaiste give Pearse Doherty an answer with regard to the national children's hospital. He was like an under-pressure estate agent furiously trying to sell an overpriced, extortionate and exorbitant hospital to an increasingly angry population at the moment. Nobody is arguing about the quality of the hospital; we are arguing about the price and the length of time it has taken to deliver. Leo Varadkar promised that it would be delivered by 2020 for €700 million, save for "an asteroid hitting the planet", yet it has ballooned to €2.2 billion. Today, five years after that initial opening date, there is still no confirmation about when it will open.

The opening date has been postponed 15 times and I and many people do not believe it will be open by 2027 at this rate. The national children's hospital is a monument to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael waste and blame-shifting. Their figures are all over this extra spending of €1.5 billion. This money did not appear from nowhere. It has come from the pockets of hard-working Irish citizens and taxpayers. It is also not a victimless crime. In terms of opportunity costs, that €1.5 billion would have paid for more than 4,500 homes. It would have housed up to 18,000 people, which is more than the number of people currently homeless.

The Tánaiste, though, is the blame-shifting expert in this country. Simon "it wasn't me" Harris is what we have in front of us at the moment. When he had a debate with me on national television during the election regarding this issue, he stated clearly he did not sign this contract. In a statement to millions of people across the country, he said he was not responsible for the signature on that contract. Will the Tánaiste say whether he was lying to the people of Ireland on that day? Was he lying to the people watching that programme about whether he is responsible for this contract? This contract lacks an enormous amount of detail and this has allowed it to become a blank cheque for the contractor. It was designed to fail from the start. It has been acknowledged that the design was not actually complete when instructions were issued to BAM to begin phase B of the construction works in January 2019. This is an incredible situation on a project that is so large and expensive.

The Tánaiste said the buck stops with him. What does that sentence actually mean? If he were the senior executive of a company where a project overran its schedule by five years and cost €1.5 billion more than it should have, he simply would not be working there anymore. Yet he is the Tánaiste of this State. I believe he is in his job because he is insulated by Fianna Fáil and Independent TDs.

I thank Deputy Tóibín.

The problem is that he cannot enforce a culture of accountability to any other elements of the Civil Service at the moment because accountability and the Tánaiste are like oil and water.

Does Deputy Tóibín know why I am in my job? It is because we had an election and I got elected. Some 458,000 people gave their first preference votes to my party. An overwhelming majority of people gave votes to the parties and Independent Deputies who make up this Government. It is called a democracy. Aontú ran and got two seats. Congratulations. The Deputy does not lecture me and does not hire me, thank you very much. I answer to the people of Wicklow. They elected me with one of the highest votes in the country, so do not give me any of that sanctimonious nonsense. We all have a mandate in this House. We had a general election. The Deputy rehearsed his lines that he must practise in front of the mirror every morning. People went out and gave their verdict, and we are in the Government. We are getting on with the business, and yes-----

Did you lie to the people?

-----of course the buck stops with me. Does the Deputy know what else-----

What does that mean?

I am going to tell the Deputy what it means. Calm down. He asked his question and I get an opportunity to answer it. It is how this place works. The Deputy asked a question about the children's hospital. I am responsible, of course. I am responsible for bringing the proposal to the Cabinet and for recommending that we proceed. The easiest thing to do in politics if you do not want to ever get into any challenging situation is to never make a decision. Does the Deputy know what else I am going to be responsible for, along with my colleagues in Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Independents, as well as those who served in government in the intervening period? We are going to be responsible for a world-class facility. We are going to be responsible for transforming children's healthcare. We are going to be responsible for making sure that parents who slept on cold, hard floors in Crumlin hospital last night can have bed facilities. We are going to be responsible for children having single ensuite rooms. We are going to be responsible for providing a health service that will have more theatres than ever before, will have open spaces for our children, will have improved medical outcomes and will tackle waiting lists.

Nobody gets everything right in politics. Many lessons have been learned. Before the Deputy asks me what that means, I will tell him. We did the PwC report. It looked at all the options and recommended that continuing and proceeding was the best option. We have brought in several changes in how we deal with capital projects since then. We have also set up an infrastructure division in the Department of public expenditure and reform. It is very easy to sit over there and just have to stand up and correct everybody else's homework. It is much harder to come to work, roll up your sleeves and actually deliver for the people of this country.

Hear, hear.

Calling it correcting homework is an understatement. I think the Tánaiste knows that, given that we could literally spend a full day with a litany of examples of overspending and waste across the whole range of the delivery of public services. Inertia, waste and blame-shifting are the characteristics of this Government. These are serious issues. Why? It is not only because it is incinerating taxpayers' money, but because these are really important public services and infrastructure that are simply not materialising for the people who need them. The Committee of Public Accounts heard this morning that BAM is only 60% through the progress it had promised to be even at this late stage. The committee heard that all the levers were being pushed to make the contractor deliver on this project, but what levers are there? What mechanisms are in the contract the Tánaiste signed off on to force the contractor to deliver these projects within the timescale and the price? There are none. The fact that there are none is because the Tánaiste, as a very well-paid Minister for Health, did not ensure they were there.

I ask the Deputy to conclude.

The Tánaiste is directly responsible for the costs and for the fact that this infrastructure is not operating for the children who need it today.

I will just point out first of all that the Deputy is very well paid himself. This country spends roughly €110 billion on its annual budget. We made a decision to invest €2.2 billion over several years in a project that will transform children's health and deliver a world-class children's hospital that will not just serve people for the lifetime of this Dáil, the next Dáil and the one after that. Long after we are all dead and buried and gone from this Earth, children will still be being served in that hospital. This is a major transformational investment decision. Yes, we all know it costs more than expected. We all know that. It is absolutely crystal clear. We have been through that not just in this election but in the one before that as well. Now it is about getting on with the job of actually transforming children's healthcare. Words like "incinerating money" and the like are inflammatory language that misses the point.

Literally inflammatory.

Pardon the pun. Not only is this children's hospital not the most expensive in the world, as the Deputy has said in the past, but it is not even the most expensive children's hospital being built on the island of Ireland per square metre according to the budget office of this Parliament.

Your excuse is they are worse. That is hardly an answer.

The Tánaiste without interruption, please.

The Deputy can shout me down if he wants, but we are going to transform children's healthcare. The Deputy can keep correcting the homework and we will get on with doing the business.