Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will start with the safety issue. I congratulate all involved in bringing the children's hospital to the level it has arrived at. It is as a result of the dedication of everybody, including the Department of Health and the board, that it has been successfully brought to this stage. I offer my good wishes for the rest of it as well.

I will address the question of safety. I am a bit worried that if a safety issue arises in the future, everybody will hark back to the situation that developed in the first place in which somebody decided to water down the safety precautions because they were considered unnecessary and too costly. I would attach a public health warning to that. It is a dangerous route to go. I would err on the side of extra expenditure on safety. Even though it may appear to be duplication, it is hugely important. It is hugely important to have public confidence in what is taking place and the reasons for it taking place. Short-changing for the want of a number of sprinklers does not add up to me. I do not support that notion.

The other issue is the car parking. Car parking is of huge interest to two groups of people - the patients, who are the most important people of all, and the staff. I have had some discussions with some of the witnesses previously about this. From the point of view of both patients and staff, it is of critical importance that the car parking be convenient and that it involves the least possible walking time in the open air. Great effort should be made to ensure it is close to the hospital buildings and that there is not a great distance or that people have to take a bus, which was envisaged. I do not agree with that at all. We should put ourselves in the position of a mother or father of a child, who is distressed, distraught and full of anxiety. The last thing they want to do is waste time finding a place to park and maybe finding themselves clamped when they come back to it, as has happened in other hospitals in the past. I ask that that be eliminated as much as possible.

With regard to philanthropy and the extent to which it could play a part, there is great opportunity for philanthropists to become involved in a positive way that is beneficial to the hospital and to health. I urge that those issues be examined carefully with a view to ensuring maximum benefit is achieved without impacting on policy or the running of services and facilities.

I am a bit concerned about the ownership of the assets. If the Department of Health owns the assets it could be a problem at some stage in the future. The ownership of sites is an issue that has raised its head in recent times with regard to the maternity hospital in particular. I ask that, in so far as possible, the determination of ownership of the surrounding land, which could impact on the operation of the facility itself or could restrict or curtail it in some way, is carefully looked at with a view to ensuring no difficulty arises.

The importance of the board goes back to my mantra for many years. So far the development board has done an excellent job. In future, the chief executive and development board will be part of a new board. It is suggested there could be difficulties arising there. One is non-statutory and the other will have to be a statutory body. There may be some difficulty in merging the two together, which might need to be examined, with a view to ensuring there is no clash of interests. We need to ponder that issue for a moment. For the past 20 years or so every issue associated with health has had commentary from the sidelines attended on it. The composition of the boards is of such importance that in order to get the kind of cohesive administration a hospital system needs, there should be representative interests on that board. I am talking about the interests of professional bodies. Professional bodies need to be represented on the board in some way to ensure the only outlet of people who want to oppose everything is to make a commentary from the sidelines, which impact negatively on the operation involved. A whole plethora of health services in this country are being dramatically negatively affected by various negative comments on a daily basis. If I was a health worker, I would not want to be associated with it. It is a huge burden on the dedicated people who go to work in the health system every day, and who work extremely hard and commit a huge number of hours above and beyond the call of duty, to find that at the same time, there is negative off-stage commentary on their performance. We need to deal with that particularly in the children's hospital structures.

The Minister will appoint the members of the board and he needs to take into account the need to accommodate, in so far as possible, diverging views without breaching the cohesiveness of the board's mission. I refer here to the internal views of the board rather than to outside criticism. If this is a groundbreaking exercise then it is of critical importance to the future of both children's health care and general health care in this country. It has been handled extremely effectively and efficiently heretofore, but there will always be criticism and because of the nature of this, there will always be second guesses coming from all over. My advice to the development board, the subsequent board and to everybody associated with these projects is to recognise that there will be a degree of descant commentary at all times, and to try to put in place the structures that will ensure that this does not continue into the future and grow into a virus that cripples the system.