Professor Chris Fitzpatrick:

St. James's provides a wide range of services. Cancer services are only one part of its specialist services. Our concern is that because it has so many other sub-specialties that it wants to advance, and it is an academic hospital, space for such a hospital is a priority. Since we are not a co-build and we are not looking for planning permission, there is a real financial risk that, in five years' time, the space will be gone and what was built, with nearly €2 billion spent, was the wrong hospital on the wrong site because it was not a tri-located hospital. The only positive thing that will emerge out of the current crisis is that people need to think and ascertain if a maternity hospital can be put there, which I think can be done, and then to make it happen. If that was the outcome of this costing crisis and the issue of maternity co-location coming in, it would be the silver lining that we have needed for this big cloud. This hospital should have a "wow" factor about it and we should be really proud of it. How it is portrayed in the media, how people look at it, and the recriminations with regard to how it went completely out of control, need to be reined back in. I have been very critical of it but I am coming here in a spirit of compromise to say that I will be happy to work with the development board in any way to try to make this happen.