Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Professor Fitzpatrick for attending the meeting today. Our paths have crossed and I alerted the committee that we know each other to an extent. I thank Professor Fitzpatrick for the time he served as master of the Coombe hospital. It is something people do and it is not often recognised. It is a very important role and I have told the health committee previously that I am a big fan of the mastership model of care. Professor Fitzpatrick will know that I have experience of having a child in a Dublin hospital who had to be transferred for the reasons Professor Fitzpatrick outlined. The child was taken from me at birth and brought to Crumlin hospital. That is not much of an effort when one is in Dublin and people might say, "what about it?". However, Professor Fitzpatrick knows the risks involved in such transfers as well as the knock-on effects of having a child, handing it over to somebody else in a different hospital and being left alone. It is not something people think about until they are in that situation. The figures are stark that in that transfer period bad things can happen and children's lives are lost.

Before becoming involved in politics I was initially not in favour of the St. James's site but I bought into the idea based on the concept of the tri-location of an adult hospital, a paediatric hospital and a maternity hospital on the same site, supported by the sub-specialties Professor Fitzpatrick has discussed. My argument for supporting the site diminishes, however, if there is no chance of a maternity hospital on site. It is critical that a maternity hospital be on the site and I thank Professor Fitzpatrick for his clear argument today that it must happen and that it must start now so it is ready and fit for purpose as well as ticking the boxes for An Bord Pleanála and all that was planned from the start. It is not the right site if there is no maternity hospital because that was one of the fundamental reasons for putting it there.

The cancer unit on the site concerns me. In St. James's Hospital and through the cancer strategy we have very good survival rates for cancer now, and I will be discussing this later in the Dáil. If there is a space there for the cancer unit does Professor Fitzpatrick think it could be put somewhere else? If he were to juggle the cancer unit and the maternity hospital, he appears to be saying today that the maternity hospital should get priority.