Dr. Róisín Healy:

We have but we have not received a reply from the Minister for Health to Connolly for Kids. We also sought a meeting with the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Katherine Zappone. She forwarded our correspondence to the Minister for Health and I understand through the Minister, Deputy Zappone, that we are on a stand-by list. However, we have had no acknowledgement. I spent an hour on the phone trying to find out what was going on and it turned out, because we had written to several Departments, that it was the Department of Children and Youth Affairs that we had a reference number with. We do not know when that will happen. Our concern is that if the main contract for construction is signed, a deadline will be reached. We have a window of opportunity of perhaps a year or maybe less where people can see sense.

Everything that has been done at St. James's will not be lost. The smaller unit can go there because that is where the smaller population is. The demographics show that there are 75,000 people in the main catchment area for St. James's. That comes from the planning application from the development board itself to An Bord Pleanála. I refer to under 16 year-olds. There are 100,000 under 16 year-olds in the Tallaght area and 100,000 in the Blanchardstown area who are within 30 minutes of the hospital. The application did not say whether that was 30 minutes driving distance, but I presume that is what was meant. That leaves another 140,000 children unaccounted for. I do not know where they are meant to go. I refer to the Wicklow kids and to others. Be that as it may, of the children who will be using this hospital as their ordinary hospital in the way that Cork kids use the Cork hospital and Limerick and Ennis children use the Limerick hospital, two thirds will come from outside the M50. Only one third will come from inside the M50.

The demographics of the under 18 childhood population for the country show that nine out of ten children live outside the M50. Yet, here we are putting in all the tertiary children who are the sickest ones. They are the ones who will use the hospital most, who will have the longest admissions and will include the highest number of day cases. Dr. Breathnach is very familiar with those. Over 50% of children coming to Crumlin for day care belong to that sickest group. At the time of the Mater application, the then development board said 72% of admissions would come from the greater Dublin area while 28% would come from outside. That has now been reversed. It is now being stated that 22% will come from outside and 78% will come from inside. I am referring to the sick children, which is to say the tertiary care children.

There are nonsense statistics going around at the moment in every county. They have been published in the local newspapers. The first sentence in this states that construction work started in August. Construction work has not even been signed. The tenders are due in one of these days. I am reading from The Sligo Championbut the reports have been similar in all the county newspapers. Ms O'Shea touched on this. The paper reports that 1.3% of children attending the three Dublin children's hospitals come from Sligo. However, what it does not say is what the 1% represents. Does that 1% represent 50 children, 500 children or 5,000 children? This statistic is a nonsense. The other thing it does not say is for how long those children are in hospital. They look at the database and see what the address is. We have a parent on the committee whose child was in Our Lady's hospital in Crumlin for three years. Someone mentioned Liam McEntee from County Galway who spent the first four years of his life in Crumlin. One has all the access problems to deal with in that regard.