Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)
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I have raised this issue before with regard to the National Paediatric Hospital. It is one of the three major projects in my own constituency that incurred enormous expense of State money which was not recoverable. One project was Thornton Hall which incurred €50 million of costs and the other was the Docklands which incurred costs of €52 million and that report has been published. The third project was the National Paediatric Hospital which incurred costs of €30.5 million. Having read the inspector's report there are clearly some very serious issues around the deviation from and the disregard for the statutory Dublin City Development Plan and the Local Area Plan. The inspector found that these plans had been breached and the inspector would effectively have no choice or alternative but to find against the planning application that was put before the planning authority. That opinion was upheld by the senior planner. These are very serious matters and the end result of this was that the children's hospital that should have been built by now, and which was to be a landmark building marking 1916 and how the Proclamation cherishes children of the nation equally, has still not had a sod turned on it. We have a new location and the planning process is currently in train but we do not know how that is going to eventually work out. The process and costs so far raise very serious matters for public concern. We should have a full-scale report to look at all of the related elements and all the circumstances that gave rise to this debacle.