Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are many sick children from Cork today in Crumlin and Temple Street hospitals. It is a project for the country that has to be located somewhere and happens to be located in Dublin.

As for the elective-only hospitals, a significant body of work is being done in my Department on deciding what these will do and deciding the policy framework. I visited Scotland not that long ago to look at its elective-only hospitals and its model. I am hoping that we will complete that policy piece of work in 2019. I will give a commitment to Senator Colm Burke to meet him and Oireachtas Members from Cork within four weeks to discuss the next steps in the preparatory work that could be taken in Cork. I am happy to give the commitment through this committee that I will arrange in the next month for this to happen.

I dealt with the issue of capital in general when the Senator was out of the room but I am happy to repeat it. There needs to be a context to this. I understand people are worried and want to know what is the impact of this and what will not happen as a result of this. The Government has been very clear. Everything we have committed to will happen. That is the first point. Projects will not be cancelled. A total of 80%% of the health capital budget is spent on projects that are not the national children's hospital. At present, 25% of our population are children and 20% of our capital budget is being spent on a hospital for children while 80% is being spend on projects that have nothing to do with the national children's hospital. The budget for the Department of Health from a capital point of view has increased by 165% for the next ten years. In real terms, that means the capital budget for the next ten years is almost €11 billion, compared with €4 billion for the past ten years. I would much rather not be in this situation. The Senator should not get me wrong in that regard but at least we are trying to deal with this situation in a time of rising, rather than static or shrinking capital budgets. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Donohoe, will bring proposals on capital re-profiling for 2019 to Cabinet shortly, as he outlined yesterday, and we will make any adjustments we are required to make then. I certainly do not see the adjustments in health capital projects in 2019 being in any way significant. It is manageable in 2019.