Bids to spend €2 billion on building the new National Maternity Hospital suggest that “no one has any kind of control on the purse strings”, Ciara Kelly has said. 

Tenders for the new building have been received and it is expected a contract will be signed this summer. 

When the project was first discussed a decade ago, a price tag of around €200 million was discussed - a figure 10 times lower than the figure officials believe it will now cost. 

On Newstalk Breakfast, presenter Ciara Kelly said the State needs to get a grip on the runaway costs it spends on infrastructure projects. 

“I just think we’re way too comfortable with spending eye watering sums on taxpayers’ money,” she said. 

“I would love there to be some kind of a spending tsar, I genuinely would, who would go, ‘No, you’re going to build it but you’re going to bring it in and it’s going to cost half that, thank you very much. Make it happen.’ 

“Then make it happen, I just don’t know why we have to have this [conversation].

“The problem is, if we’re okay with €2 billion, it’ll actually cost €3 billion. 

“It’s like no one has any kind of control on the purse strings.” 

Ciara added that it resembles a “running tap and I do dislike it”.  

Minister’s Jack Chambers and Paschal Donohoe on the steps of Leinster House. Image: Alamy

Fellow presenter Shane disagreed and said well built infrastructure is going to be expensive in a society where workers are well paid. 

“There are obviously cases of ridiculous overspending and I agree we are too careless,” he said. 

“But these are tenders from building firms; these are private sector firms who are tendering for it. 

“I think that’s the world we live in; we now live in a high cost economy where building costs are high, import costs are high, planning costs are high because the process is drawn out. 

“This is the kind of economy we’ve chosen and I would much rather come in with a realistic tender and bid because I don’t think you can build a hospital now in the west for less than €2 billion.”

The new National Children’s Hospital due to open in the coming months will cost the State in the region of €2.2 billion - significantly more than the €650 million budgeted for the project in 2015.

Main image: Ciara Kelly in the Newstalk studio. Image: Rory Walsh/Newstalk