Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Self-evidently, however, Ms Conroy's final point is not true, because if it were, the planning and development phase would have started. The Department may say that for engineering or capital reasons or whatever, the two hospitals will not be built at the same time. I have no technical view on that. Nevertheless, that is not the current situation. We are in the middle of building the children's hospital, but the basic, preliminary design and planning work for the maternity hospital has not even started. By definition, we are not moving as expeditiously as we could to be in a position to start building the maternity hospital as soon as possible. That is exactly what we should be doing but we are not, and my question is why. Why have we not even started the planning and development phase, which can take years? God knows, Ms Hardiman was involved in the hospital on two different sites over many years and it all related to planning and development.