Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not know Mr. O'Flynn, apart from what I have seen publicly about him. I am very glad to see this work. At least it is not all negative. I am not going to talk about Cork and Kerry.

We are building a children’s hospital in Dublin and it has been mired in controversy about where it will be located but mostly about the position of the car park. That stuns me because if I had a child, or when I have a grandchild in the next few months, I would be more interested in knowing the best place for that child to go if he or she is sick. Have the witnesses identified a site? This is very important because the nonsense that has gone on over the children’s hospital is frightening. Maybe I am missing out on something but the transfer of the National Maternity Hospital from Holles Street to St. Vincent's Hospital seems to have gone seamlessly and I do not hear talk about car parking. I would like the witnesses to deal with the site issue. It has to be a hospital of excellence.

Modular schools are prefabricated buildings but when the witnesses talk about a modular hospital building I take it they are talking about, for example, putting in the maternity department first and adding to it. I wish them luck and hope they will tie down the best site for the children’s hospital. They had better include the politicians in their deliberations or it will be going on for years