Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am not surprised by the Minister of State's response. It is as clear as the nose on one's face that the money will not be available for projects such as that at South Tipperary General Hospital, Limerick hospital and many other locations. It is galling to have to endure the belated and disingenuous bleating of all the other groupings and main political parties in the Dáil, when those of us in the Rural Independent Group, working with Connolly for Kids and the Jack and Jill Foundation, clearly laid out in our Private Members' motion the likelihood of this exact scenario coming to pass in March 2017, a full month before the Government signed off on the original estimate. Not one member of those parties supported us. They were all in bed together, putting the matter aside, and now we have the mess and trauma of people sick and waiting on trolleys and so on.

I have zero confidence that the national paediatric hospital development board or the Minister are capable of ensuring that phase B of the project will be delivered. Similarly, the national maternity hospital was meant to be developed alongside it. Sick children need to be rolled in from the maternity hospital to the same campus, but it will not happen. There is no helipad. Rather, there is only the side of a building. There is no access by car because of chronic traffic. There is no safety for nurses or retention of nurses, and we are unable to get nurses to work here. It is a fiasco over which the Government is presiding with the support of the political parties of the House. They can all cry wolf but it is too late.

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