Professor Chris Fitzpatrick:

-----of children. From our point of view, they are the children with the greatest need. Because of their fragility we felt the greatest commitment to advocating for them. The number of children is small but the consequences of excluding them from this iconic trilocation are not. I also refer to the exclusion of mothers. We are very conscious of the fact that mothers now need access to adult sub-specialty services because of increasing risk, co-morbidities and body mass indices, BMIs. This is needed for mothers and particularly for babies.

The Taoiseach asked for an application for a co-build in 2014. That did not happen. We can revisit the history and note that deadlines were missed and calculations were erroneous. Starting from this point however, I would love for the committee to make a recommendation in its meeting with the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board. The board's PowerPoint presentations to this committee mentioned wider community spin-offs, such as raising educational aspirations in the community, benefit to businesses in the community and employment and training opportunities. However there was not one mention of the Coombe or of babies, and we are down the road from that hospital. To me, that symbolised the way babies and maternity hospitals were excluded from the process. As a maternity hospital, we do not have the same political clout and influence as the bigger hospitals. I think that is the case for all maternity hospitals. However, at the present time there is a willingness to make this work.