Every item is being looked at and, especially, every variation from the original estimated cost is being fiercely fought over.

This, sources said, is the crux of the battle the government is fighting in its bid to bring the county’s finances under control.

Health expenditure is one of the runaway items in the government’s budget, mostly due to the increases in the price of medicines. But the additional cost of building the new hospital and, eventually, the cost to run it are so great that former Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami once compared them to a “nightmare”.

Some, even those in the upper echelons of the country, have often suggested blocking the whole development altogether but it is obvious the government, which uses the new hospital’s image as a potent image of what the country’s future will be like, will never countenance that.

Instead, however, it is poring over the books and questioning each item of expenditure.

In a series of meetings with Skanska, it is understood that the government has insisted that the capital expenditure of the hospital must not go beyond the stated levels, which are understood to be in the region of Lm140 million.

The government has made it equally clear it would even like to cut this figure.

Whereas cost overruns could have been accepted in the past, sources said they are being contested at every stage now.

And while the ongoing review of operations is being carried out, it is understood that the government would not find it amiss if the completion of the new hospital is delayed by some two years, as long as it is opened during this legislature.