Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I wish to raise precisely the same issue as my colleague, Deputy Rabbitte. Senator Brian Hayes raised the matter in the Seanad, with particular reference to the method used to select the tertiary hospital. That certainly needs explaining because, in terms of accessibility alone, it is difficult to think of anywhere less accessible than the Mater Hospital.

My concern is over the decision that the tertiary hospital, wherever it is located, is to be the only hospital providing paediatric services to children in Dublin. It makes absolutely no sense to run down or eliminate existing services which work very well and with which the public is absolutely satisfied. Many of us have known the writing has been on the wall for Crumlin Hospital for a long time, because it is a single specialty hospital, but it makes no sense to also run down and eliminate the services in the National Children's Hospital in Tallaght, leaving most of the children in the Dublin region with access to only one hospital where they will have to go even for ordinary paediatric services for the most common illnesses, rather than complex, tertiary services. Most childhood admissions to hospitals are for ordinary illnesses, often overnight. The idea of blocking expensive beds in a tertiary hospital for that kind of use is absolute nonsense and cannot be justified on expense grounds alone. Those beds will be so limited that Dublin children will not have access to hospital beds in the way the rest of the country might.

Parents understand that everybody cannot have a local hospital but do not understand how the rest of the country can have the services of a secondary hospital for the more common illnesses in addition to a tertiary hospital, while Dublin parents will only have access to the limited beds available in the national tertiary hospital.

I fully support the concept of having specialist services in one national tertiary hospital. To remove from a large swathe of the population vital, accessible children's services, and to abandon all the expertise and experience that has been painstakingly built up in the National Children's Hospital, Tallaght, over the years is economic, demographic and medical folly.

I do not know which bright spark decided that, uniquely for children in Dublin, the national tertiary hospital should also be their local hospital. Why is this arrangement being made for children but not for adults? Tertiary hospitals are required for all specialties but no one suggests we close all the adult hospitals in Dublin to provide the critical mass necessary to provide a tertiary service to the rest of the country. If anybody suggested the closure of five of the six major Dublin hospitals they would be laughed off the stage so why are we suggesting it for children? Just under 40% of the population live in the greater Dublin area. What on earth made anybody think one tertiary hospital would meet all the paediatric needs of the Dublin area?

I ask the Minister of State to heed what we say. I am not an alarmist but this is absolute nonsense. It is dangerous nonsense and has to be stopped.

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