Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We cannot afford not to do it. Not building the hospital would be a scar on our legacy as an Oireachtas and a Government. We would yet again neglect kids who went through the last economic boom being promised a hospital that was never built because of the parish-pump politics of trying to fit it into people's constituencies on a site for which we could never get planning permission. We wasted €40 million of taxpayers' money and, more importantly, years of kids' lives by not building the hospital. While it is extremely expensive, and while it is an extremely disappointing, annoying and frustrating situation, we will get the answers and continue to do all we can to rein in costs. We will hold feet to the coals in that regard, but we cannot afford not to build the hospital.