Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I welcome the Minister of State who spoke on this matter on 9 October 2003. If the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Martin, and his Ministers of State, Deputies Lenihan and Callely, were subject to penalty points on this debacle they would be long off the road and their ministerial cars would have been taken from them. Equally if they were contestants in this weekend's Eurovision Song Contest their score would be "nul point" for failing to manage public resources properly. A total of €105 million has been spent on the new building and the new wing for Blanchardstown hospital. Despite being ready for more than nine months, beyond an extended snag list period the new, state-of-the-art accident and emergency unit remains empty while staff work next door in prefabs that would shame a developing country.

The new operating theatres, costing many millions of euro, lie dark and unused as do the intensive care unit and many of the new surgical beds. Blanchardstown, Dublin 15 and the areas of County Meath served by James Connolly Memorial Hospital are among the fastest growing areas in Western Europe. The latest consequence of the failure to commission fully the new buildings in the hospital is that other hospital facilities are under severe strain. For example, since yesterday the Northern Area Health Board refuses to clarify the future of the drug dispensing and treatment service at James Connolly Memorial Hospital for people with drug addiction.

This drugs dispensing service may be transferred to the Mountview health centre in the heart of Lohunda and Mountview parish. The health board seems to be about to pull community welfare staff out of this building and instead convert the building to a drugs treatment centre for the whole of Dublin 15. This is despite the fact that the Mountview health centre is located in a spot notorious for anti-social behaviour and vandalism, is beside a primary school, two youth clubs, a neighbourhood family centre and the local church. Were the new hospital building to be fully opened, there would be no need to relocate the drug dispensing services which have been carried on for several years successfully in the grounds of James Connolly Memorial Hospital. I was one of the politicians who negotiated that extremely successful arrangement with the community and now it is to be upended because of this Government's total failure of management and ineptitude.

On 9 October, 2003, the Minister of State, Deputy Callely, speaking on behalf of the Minister for Health and Children, promised that the new facilities would be open within a matter of months and he said, in good faith:

The Eastern Regional Health Authority, Northern Area Health Board and management of James Connolly Memorial Hospital are also finalising arrangements to transfer existing accident and emergency services to the new facility upon its anticipated completion in November. I understand the completion date is within four weeks. We expect the building will be in use in November.

To date, there is one small department dealing with rheumatology and a couple of medical beds open simply for the optics. They are welcome but the rest of the building lies unused. I want the Minister of State to apologise on behalf of his senior Minister to the people of Blanchardstown and Dublin 15 for such a blatant mis-statement of the truth. Last week the Government acknowledged the waste of €52 million on the e-voting debacle. It is outrageous that elderly people are waiting on trollies in James Connolly Memorial Hospital and that in last week's report of the treatment purchase fund, the James Connolly Memorial Hospital is listed as one of the four hospital black spots for waiting lists in the Dublin area.

The dedicated staff of doctors and nurses there have said over and over again, and as recently as last week in response to that report that many hundreds of new procedures could be performed if the theatres, ICU and surgical beds in the new unit were fully commissioned. Fianna Fáil and the PDs have refused to commission these desperately needed facilities for the sake of a €5 million operating deficit. Ironically, €1 million of this deficit arises from a "fine" imposed on the hospital for lack of efficiency in the turnover of patients. We are living in Alice in Wonderland when a hospital housed in Dickensian conditions can be fined for inefficiency. I thought Fianna Fáil was so clever at politicking that the Minister for State would be out with the Taoiseach and the Minister for Health and Children cutting the ribbon on the new hospital. It would be a political stroke but I would have accepted it. The Minister of State does not seem to be able or willing in this case to perform that stroke. It is a disgrace.

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