Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It saddens me greatly to be standing up here tonight and that the Rural Independent Group and I have again had to put forward a motion on the national children's hospital. The knowledge of the enormous cost overruns of the national children's hospital, and that people up and down the country will suffer in order to make up the €100 million funding gap, saddens me for sure. What saddens me more is that all this could have been avoided.

The Rural Independent Group and I stood in this very Chamber almost two years ago on 29 March 2017 and put forward a motion on the national children's hospital. Two years ago we could see that the national children's hospital should not go ahead on the proposed site. As part of the statement that I made two years ago I quoted an email from a parent:

St. James's is wrong for children. St. James's is wrong for families. St. James's is utterly wrong.

It looks to me as if the Government agrees, because the senior Minister is not here tonight to discuss this. As Deputy Michael Healy-Rae said, the Government benches are empty. This is the most shocking scandal in recent years and bar the Minister of State, the members of the Government do not have the dignity or respect to turn up here and discuss it.

I want answers from this Government. When the Rural Independent Group and I raised our concerns two years ago, why did it not listen to us? Why were we ignored? What is going on in this State? What kind of pathology does this show? The way the Government is treating the people is appalling. Scandalously, projects will be destroyed by this. Why did the Government refuse to listen to parents who opposed placing the hospital on this site from the very beginning? This Government also ignored a petition of 60,000 signatures opposing St. James's Hospital campus as the site for the national children's hospital. I want to know why this Government thought it was above everyone else. I need to understand how a Government could completely ignore the valid concerns of Members like the Rural Independent Group and myself, the parents of the children who will be using the hospital and the views of the public.

It galls me that until recently the Minister of Health, Deputy Simon Harris, was still insisting that the hospital represented value for money. Where in the name of God is the value for money for the people throughout the country who will have to suffer the budget cuts caused by these hospital overruns? Many projects are gone. We know they are, but that is being hidden. We are being codded. One example is the Sandycove primary school project. Parents are waiting for a primary school down there. They have been promised it several times. Now they have been given another cod of a promise and it has been put off until 2022. This is a joke. All these projects are being delayed and it will cost this country seriously. The incompetence of this Government is frightening. One only has to look at the recklessness of infrastructure spending reflected in budget overruns on previous projects. I refer to the Luas, the early days of the road programme, the maternity and children's hospital and the likely final cost of the national broadband plan. Now we do not even know if that project will happen. This is probably going to result in the Government pulling the national rural broadband plan.

These have all seen major overruns. On top of this, we know that 15 of the major school building projects completed since 2010 ended up costing more than the agreed tender price. This is not acceptable. Our health service is on its knees. It shocked me to the core to find out that each year, 370 people in Cork alone unnecessarily go permanently and irreversibly blind due to lack of treatment. The South Infirmary Victoria University Hospital in Cork was promised a new ophthalmology unit in 2007. Can this Government give me assurances that this unit will go ahead? Where will the money for it be found now? Alternatively, will we Independent Members continue to clean up the Government's mess and take patients to the North of Ireland to be looked after?

We have a health service with very frustrated staff.

The nurses have criticised the unreasonable contract offered by the Government after the recent strike. I fully support the nurses and I am appalled that this Government could treat its nurses in such a shocking manner. Ambulance personnel who are members of the Psychiatric Nurses Association of Ireland, PNA, are still protesting for their rights and I stand strong beside them. The PNA will be protesting outside Dáil Éireann on Wednesday, 27 March. It is time this Government listened to the request of the PNA and gave its members a resolution.

Members should consider Vera Twomey's battle. I am trying to point out the utter incompetence on the part of the Minister for Health. It is time for the Government to listen but as we have said time and again already this evening, there is no one there to listen. To get medicinal cannabis, Vera Twomey's family and other families must fly regularly to Holland to bring home the medicine to save their children, while this Government lies idly by. It does not care. It does not worry about the people who are seeking that. There is a mechanism through which people can find some resolution. This Government has a Bill before it. It will not pass the Bill or allow this medication to be brought home and administered through pharmacies to save the parents distress.

The incompetence of the Government is nothing short of appalling. We only have to look across the floor of the House. We are faced with an appalling situation and nobody cares. That is the bottom line. That is what the people throughout west Cork and the rest of the country believe; nobody cares.

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