Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Waiting times for CervicalCheck have jumped from two weeks to six months. Some 78,000 women are now waiting for results. The Government announced that the HPV test would be in place by last September and then by January, but last week the HSE told us that there was no longer a date. The Minister was asked repeatedly to stop the free test. That is documented. Last week he said in the House that at no point was he ever given advice not to proceed with the test. The day before the test announcement was made the clinical director of CervicalCheck was on the national airwaves advising against out-of-cycle repeat smear tests, except in exceptional circumstances. Last Sunday Susan Mitchell wrote in the Sunday Business Postthat CervicalCheck had advised against a free smear test and had done so before the Government made the offer. If that is true, we need to know if the Minister has misled the Dáil for a second time.

Then there is the issue of the national children's hospital. In 2016 it was due to cost €650 million in total. It is now €1.7 billion and counting. The two most expensive hospitals ever built in the world are in Adelaide and Stockholm. The cost per bed at these two hospitals came in at €1.6 million and €1.8 million. At current costs, before they potentially increase, the cost per bed in the national children's hospital will be approximately €3.6 million, or twice as much as in the two most expensive hospitals ever built. When I pointed this out, the Government responded that they were not children's hospitals and that I had to look at children's hospitals. Let us do that. Four years ago the Alder Hey Children's Hospital was completed in Liverpool. It has 309 beds and the cost came in at €270 million. That gives a cost per bed of approximately €900,000. The public money of the taxpayers of Ireland is being used to provide beds in a children's hospital that will cost four times more per bed than the NHS was able to deliver for children in Liverpool.

The Government's response has been extraordinary. First, it kept the information to itself. While the development board hired a PR firm to gauge the public's reaction to the bad news, this House was kept in the dark. When the facts began to emerge, the first line of defence was that it was due to inflation. It was unfortunate, but inflation is what it was and what could one do? In fairness to the Minister, last week in the House he accepted that inflation was not driving the increase. The Government has an extraordinary line to the effect that it is not really a cost overrun but that it underestimated the cost at the start. Underestimating the cost is regrettable, but it is obviously less grievous than just letting costs spiral completely out of control. Defying all credibility, the Government's current position is that, at €1.4 billion, plus another €300 million to open it, it still represents a reasonable cost to the State.

Fianna Fáil does not have confidence in the Government when it comes to healthcare. We do not have confidence now and did not have last year when waiting lists and trolley counts broke all records, but we will not be voting confidence in the Minister. Reasonable people might ask why Fianna Fáil would abstain in the vote. It is because if it were to do otherwise, it would trigger a general election.

See this speech in context