Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 23 January 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

National Children's Hospital: Discussion (Resumed)

I would like to go back to forward planning. It was said to me recently that if we carried out forward planning for building during recessionary times we could build at a far cheaper cost. We do not seem to be able to do that with a hospital service. We are going from year to year. On the Cork project, there is a need for an elective hospital. We face an increase in population of 130,000. There has been no consultation at all with the voluntary hospitals in Cork on how that plan is to go forward. Will it be it next year, the year after or in five years that this consultation will start? When we talk about forward planning in the HSE and the Department, what engagement is currently in place on forward planning for projects identified under the national development plan? What engagement has already started so that we do not end up with the same scenario as with the children's hospital? I saw a tweet this morning saying it was 31 years ago when we first thought about the national children's hospital. Where are we with that, both in the Department and the HSE?