“We have a real concern that some companies have been lowballing, coming in with very low tender prices to get the contract and then coming back with claims thereafter,” Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said in the Dáil on February 12, 2019. The spiralling budget overruns in the National Children’s Hospital, now coming in at an estimated total cost of €1.73 billion, had put the question sharply into focus.  In his then role as finance minister Paschal Donohoe told Morning Ireland the following day: “I’m being very clear, something went wrong here. There are learnings that we will have to address in…

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