Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)

The Minister is right. It is a question of choices. In our budget submission we will put forward a programme of asset and wealth taxes that could be utilised to pay for measures to put people back to work and to put jobs back on the highest point of the agenda again.

I have a particular question relating to the new children's hospital. Before the election, many Deputies on the other side of the House, including the Minister for Health, came to the people of Crumlin to discuss the children's hospital. They said that the new Mater site was not a good site, nor one they would support. We all seek the best for our children and to make the best resources available for them but this is a matter of part funding the construction of a new children's hospital. The licensing will be examined in future but we do not know what type of licence will be put out for the national lottery and we do not know what protection will be given to the State in this regard. On the radio on Sunday morning I heard an advocate of the children's hospital suggest that they have sorted out the traffic problems, that there will be signage from the Naas Road to the Mater site and that if there are any problems on the way to the hospital the emergency services will be able to respond and get people from any given spot to the hospital etc. The person concerned appealed for ordinary people to donate €100 to build wards and so on. There is a significant question mark over all of this. We need the best for our children and at present there are three hospitals in place which, to my mind, can deliver this. There has been significant investment in the Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin in recent times, including new wards, operation theatres etc.

The question of metro north should not be an either-or situation and I have no wish to pose it that way. However, I raise the issue because people do not see the rationale of the new Mater site or the proposal to put it there. What is the intention of the site at Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin if the Mater project goes ahead?

See this speech in context