Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----and open to the children of Ireland to receive the best quality paediatric healthcare in the world, which is what I believe they deserve. This project is the biggest single investment in healthcare in our history and it allows three rather old hospitals at Crumlin, Temple Street and Tallaght to be replaced by a new state-of-the-art hospital. It will be a hospital with all the best equipment: five MRI machines, ten theatres for children who need operations, outpatient departments, and single rooms for every child to reduce the risk of infection, give them the privacy they deserve, and ensure that their parents can stay with them at night if need be. This is going from antiquated infrastructure that is not up to standard to what will be, I believe, one of the best children's hospitals in the world when it opens.

We are getting there. Deputy Micheál Martin is right to say that this project has a long history. The fact that planning permission was not secured at the Mater caused cost and delays. We now have planning permission secured for the site beside St. James's.

The children's hospital itself comes into existence on 1 January 2019. The three hospitals will be merged under a single governance structure, which is getting right the hospitals' merger across the three sites before they come together in the one building.

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