The proposed National Children's Hospital.A total of eight other public expenditure projects have funds withdrawn to accommodate the overspend.
The Minister for Finance has revealed how €99m will be diverted from other tax payer funded projects in order to cover the children's hospital overspend.
Speaking today the Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform, Paschal Donohoe TD, explained how the government planned to gather the €99m required this year for the National Children’s Hospital.
While maintaining minimum disruption to the other planned key infrastructure projects.
Cuts and delays announced by DPER to help pay for national children’s hospital costs #iestaff via @Junomaco pic.twitter.com/8y0cQKM0oL
— Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) February 12, 2019
Minister Donohoe revealed that in the Health sector, the scheduled draw-down of €24m across both 2019 and 2020 will be amended to facilitate delivering the overall investment programme, but said this adjustment will still leave a year-on-year increase of 25% in capital investment in the Health sector in 2019.
The remaining €75m will affect the following projects:
- Re-scheduling of €27m arising in relation to the A5 Motorway in Northern Ireland;
- Re-scheduling of €10m arising in relation to the National Forensic Science Laboratory;
- Advance payment of a sum of €10m from the Department of Education and Skills in respect of higher education facilities at the National Children’s Hospital;
- An updating of the scheduled draw-down of €16m from the two Project Ireland 2040 Regeneration Funds, which are being profiled for expenditure throughout the course of both 2019 and 2020 without delays in project planning, design and delivery;
- Re-profiling of payments of €4m under certain programmes of investment in Communications, Climate Action & Environment;
- €3m from the re-profiling of investment under the Flood Risk Management Programme of the Office of Public Works to allow for capacity to be built up over the course of the NDP period;
- Revision of the schedule of drawdown of funding in the PER and Finance Groups of Votes totalling €3m;
- €2m through changes to the timing of payments relating to certain capital works by the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, with full project delivery scheduled across both 2019 and 2020.
