Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The date 24 October will long live in the Minister's memory because it was the day he visited the, for want of a better phrase, "phantom hospital" in Cashel. By any standard, it was bizarre, and I think the Minister acknowledged that fact. The hospital being visited by the Minister for Health did not have a single patient. A huge amount of funding has been put into the hospital and that spend will come before the Committee of Public Accounts, of which I am Vice Chairman, in the coming months. However, the real issue is that we have an empty state-of-the-art hospital. Following the agreement reached between the Cashel hospital action group and the health board as a result of the 1996 High Court case, many promises were made by many predecessors of all political colours on the services this hospital would provide, but all those promises have fallen by the wayside. The hospital in Clonmel has one of the worst overcrowding situations in the country, yet up the road we have this incredible facility. Will the Minister tell us today of a plan for this hospital?

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