Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Cabinet took a decision last Tuesday week to publish all of the documentation and pause the decision. It is almost two years since the Government was formed and prior to that there were many more years of discussions and toing and froing. The only objective of the Government is to provide a 21st-century hospital for the women of Ireland and a neonatal centre of excellence. The current confined conditions of the neonatal unit are nothing to write home about. There has been exhaustive engagement with all of the authorities. The whole idea is co-location and to co-locate a maternity hospital with a tertiary hospital of the size and scale of St. Vincent's. It has been policy for 25 years to co-locate.