Noel Grealish (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleagues in the Rural Independent Group for putting forward this motion. When I was first elected to the Dáil in 2002, a major topic of debate in the House was the need for a new national children’s hospital. Here we are in 2017, 15 years later, and still there is little to show for all the talk and debate in the interim. Instead, Ireland is on the brink of creating a world record for all the wrong reasons, that is, the most expensive children's hospital to be built anywhere in the world. The cost of the project just a few short years ago, in 2012, was predicted to be €404 million, but it has now soared to more than €1 billion and is rising.

The reason we have put this motion before the House is that we do not believe the St. James’s Hospital site is a suitable one for a development of this scale. We seriously question much of the Government's justification for continuing to insist that the new hospital be built at this location. While I and my group fully support the provision of a new national children's hospital, we have to get this right. It is a €1 billion-plus investment and even that price tag looks likely to continue to increase.

One of the considerations in deciding where the new children's hospital should be built was whether it should be co-located with a maternity hospital or with an adult hospital. I feel that, in deciding to build on the same campus as the adult hospital at St. James's, the wrong decision was made. Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown offers a much better option for several reasons. When we are planning developments of this scale, we should think of the needs of the whole country, not just Dublin. Blanchardstown would be a much more accessible location for people coming into the city to visit their sick children as it is located just off the M50, as opposed to a journey through congested traffic into the city centre, with a nightmare of limited parking to be faced at the other end. Another big plus is the fact that the new Rotunda maternity hospital is to be built in the coming years next to the Connolly Hospital complex, and the proximity of a full-scale children's hospital next door would surely help to improve outcomes in cases of post-natal problems among vulnerable babies. A third consideration on a long list of reasons the current decision is the wrong one is the fact it would cost much less to build on a greenfield site next to Connolly Hospital than in the built-up urban setting currently being promoted.

The current estimate of the cost of building a national children's hospital at the St. James's site is in the region of €1.1 billion whereas I have seen estimates for building the same facility at Connolly Hospital being put at 25% less. That is a saving of more than €250 million that could be put towards other vital services and capital projects that are badly needed within our health system or towards the provision of life-saving and life-changing drugs that are the centre of so much debate in Ireland at the moment. I urge the Government to have another look at the facts and, indeed, the figures and to make the right decision for the future of the country and its children.

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