Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. It is no wonder that the Government does not have the funds to pay the ambulance drivers or the nurses. In 2017, the Rural Independent Group and I put a motion before the Dáil relating to the site for the national children's hospital. We listened to Connolly for Kids, Dr. Finn Breathnach, Jonathan Irwin of the Jack and Jill Foundation, and Dr. Róisín Healy. It was magnificent. These people pointed out clearly to everyone here, not only to us, that the hospital was to be built on the wrong site, that it could not be delivered because of access and that there was no helipad. They gave a plethora of reasons. Is the Government going to persist with this total waste of money? Why not abandon the project which is not out of the ground yet, but go out instead to a greenfield site in Blanchardstown which the Government could have had for nothing, which is accessible to all the people of rural Ireland and to helicopters and so on?

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