Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am happy to take the opportunity to wind up this evening's debate. Before I do, I thank my colleagues in the Rural Independent Group for agreeing to bring forward this motion and putting so much time, effort and energy into it. I also thank David and Mairéad in my office for working so hard. I also thank Deputies Mick Wallace, Clare Daly, Seamus Healy and Michael Fitzmaurice as well as Deputies Carol Nolan and Peter Fitzpatrick for their support. Finally and most of all, I want to thank and welcome the families of the sick children who are at the centre of this motion and to welcome very hard-working people from the Connolly for Kids campaign. They must be quite bored and disgusted. While there were four of us here, there were never as many as four Members on the Government side. There were two when the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, came in. There was only one junior Minister. It is an insult that the Minister for Health would not even bother to come in here for this debate tonight. It is a scandal. I am really disappointed in the Minister of State. It is nothing personal but the Government shoved him in here - a newly appointed junior Minister and an Independent Deputy. He came in here and read out that diatribe to us. The Minister of State is a quantity surveyor and a former lecturer in an institute of technology. God help the students if that is the diatribe he expects them to believe and I do not think he does. I am surprised if reading out that diatribe tonight is the price of power. It is unbelievable.

All of us are doing this so that all the children of this island can have access to a hospital that is truly fit for purpose and that cherishes all of the children of the nation equally. Where did we hear that before? We heard it in 2016 during the centenary of the 1916 Rising. The Government should be ashamed of itself. In March 2017, when my colleagues and I first put down a motion on this issue, we believed that the evidence was so obvious and so clear that anyone who took the time to review it could only be persuaded of the need to locate the national children's hospital at a greenfield site. It is so obvious. Being a quantity surveyor, the Minister of State should know this more than anyone. Unfortunately, as we know, the majority of Members either abstained or voted against us. They sat on their lámha like Fianna Fáil is doing again tonight. Fianna Fáil is so used to doing that, it does not know what else to do. At that time, the Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, said we were at a point at which a world-class design with child-friendly, high-spec modern interiors and acres of outdoor space had been completed and had received planning permission following a robust planning application. We know now that this was not the case. One could not swing a cat in it never mind see acres of outside space. The roof garden on top of the hospital will be the most polluted site in the city. What we are closer to today is one of the greatest health-related capital infrastructure scandals in the history of the State and the Minister of State will add his name to it for posterity.

I heard no willingness on the part of Government to genuinely engage with even the possibility that this might still be the wrong site and the wrong location. Instead the Government appears to have dug its heels in and decided that no amount of evidence or pleading will work against delivering the project at St. James's. As was noted by other Deputies here tonight and as we noted in 2017, it is a national disgrace that the interests and vanities of medical academics - certain third-level institutions like our neighbours, Trinity College over the road - and political inability to admit a mistake has taken precedence over the pleas of parents of the sickest children. Shame on you. I repeat again that none of the arguments put forward by the Minister has allayed the fears of the parents of all these sick children. What is equally galling is that we know there are Members in each of the main parties, who are ashamed to come in here, who explicitly accept that this is the wrong site but have somehow convinced themselves that getting the hospital built now is more important than getting it built in the right place where the best outcomes can be achieved. That is the excuse they give.

There is another falsehood I want to debunk because we believe and have evidence to support our belief along with doctors who agree with us that the hospital can still be built as quickly on a greenfield site. I am involved in construction, as are other Members, and they know that it would be much easier to build the hospital on a greenfield site where the best clinical outcomes could be achieved with co-location where one has the necessary space. As a quantity surveyor and a former lecturer, the Minister of State should know that above anyone else. I reiterate a saying of Mahatma Ghandi - "it doesn't really matter how fast you're going if you're heading in the wrong direction" and the Government certainly is, as is the Minister of State as a new addition to it. All of the assurances of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board ring hollow to the parents' ears because they know what it is like to sit with terror in their hearts as their sick children sit in congested traffic and struggle for their tiny lives. We have heard - as have government members - the ambulance drivers and nurses screaming "how long more to get to this place?" It is my great fear that we will be back here in a few short years talking about the completely avoidable deaths that have, unfortunately, taken place when vulnerable, high-risk babies had to travel from rural Ireland. Do people in rural Ireland matter? The Minister of State is from rural Ireland; he should know. What about people from some parts of Dublin, which are as bad as rural Ireland because the traffic is so bad, trying to gain access to the congested St. James's site? I hope and pray that day never comes but I fear it must if we persist in the madness of pursuing the present location of the national children's hospital.

Colleagues here tonight have raised compelling arguments for the suspension of the project pending an independent investigation. Indeed I cannot see what can possibly be lost by agreeing to such a request. It would be time-limited. I accept Deputy Bríd Smith's amendment. If the Government is worried about losing time then I suggest it thinks about the loss of time from another perspective. What about the loss of time for a parent of a sick or dying child who is stuck in traffic? Just consider that for a moment. They are obviously ashamed to consider it because they did not come into the Chamber. What about the loss of time for a parent who may have to go on and give 24-7 care to a desperately ill child who could not access the location quick enough? What about the loss of time for the children who may never know what it is like to run and play with their friends because they have suffered an irreversible disability or injury due to the lack of co-location with a maternity hospital? That will not happen. We were told by clinical experts that children born with brain difficulties have a maximum of 12 minutes to have an operation.

In light of this, I plead with every Member of the House to support the motion and do the right thing. I ask them to leave aside political loyalties and place their loyalties instead with the families and children who know, far more than most, that continuing at St James's represents a catastrophic error of judgment. It is unbelievable. Deputy Donnelly mentioned all the people telling him that it is the right place and the right decision and nobody says otherwise. I would ask Deputy Donnelly to examine his conscience. The following groups made up of parents and patients are 100% opposed to the construction of the national children's hospital where it is proposed to be constructed. They are out fun raising every day. I was at a launch for Daffodil Day. We are all fundraising. The Government is squandering money like it was confetti at a wedding. Eight hundred families whose children have scoliosis, groups representing children with complex heart conditions north and south, LauraLynn Children's Hospice, the Extra Special Kids Group, Aoibheann's Pink Tie, the Jack and Jill Children's Foundation and many others are all 100% opposed and Deputy Donnelly is ignoring them because he is giving the Government a free pass. He sheds crocodile tears here like his leader, Deputy Micheál Martin, and says how awful the Government is but he still gives it a pass. Let members of the Government travel all over the world for St. Patrick's Day and do not demand that the Minister comes in tonight. It is an utter disgrace that no senior Minister came in for this debate - only two junior Ministers. If you want a job done, do not bring half a person and half a shovel. The Government has dug a hole and has gone down so far, it can never come out. It will be in hell next and it deserves to go to hell and perish there for this. I should not even be getting angry because I am wasting my breath on the Government.

We have analysis done by experts to rebut the Government and Fianna Fáil's amendments. When Brexit disappears, the Government will need somewhere else to hide. There will be no place to hide. The Government cannot hide from sick children and their families. The rebuttal of the Government's arguments in its amendment was unbelievable. We were told that clinical considerations were paramount in the Government's decision. According to the rebuttal, no study has ever shown that co-location of a children's hospital with an adult hospital provides any advantage whatsoever for the treatment of sick children. This is a fact. The argument that the Government’s decision to redevelop the Coombe Women and Infants Hospital on the St. James's campus in the context of achieving tri-location of adult, paediatric and maternity services is wrong. According to the rebuttal, the site at St. James’s Hospital is incapable of accommodating the maternity hospital. It is just not going to happen. The former Master of the Coombe Hospital said that. It is just pie in the sky. Regarding the argument about the capacity of the site at St. James's to accommodate the new children's hospital and maternity hospital and the incorporation into the design of the children's hospital of the required operational links with both maternity and adult hospitals on the St. James's Hospital campus, the rebuttal states that if the children's hospital goes ahead on the St. James's site, a full service maternity hospital cannot be accommodated there. If one goes out and takes one look at the site, he or she would know that. If somebody flew over the site on a helicopter, he or she would see it. The rebuttal states that we know this because despite being requested several times by An Bord Pleanála to provide a master plan showing how the maternity hospital would be accommodated, it has never been in a position to do so as the site would have been so overloaded with the children's hospital that not a single additional car parking space could be provided.

Dublin City Council has emphasised time and again that hospitals cannot function without parking spaces. It is just farcical.

I have a letter from Dr. Jimmy Sheehan. I thank him, as well as Dr. Finn Breathnach, Dr. Róisín Healy, Ms Aisling McNiffe and the countless others who have helped us and tried to talk sense. In recent days Dr. Sheehan wrote to every Member, including the Minister of State, Deputy Canney. The letter reads:

There is now an opportunity to consider this option on a greenfield site.

Existing work on the St. James' site can be completed to ground level with the provision of the planned multistorey car park, leaving the site above ground for future expansion of the adult St. James' Hospital, for whatever needs arise [of which there are many at this time].

I have previously stated on the public record at the Health Committee meeting, and repeated publicly on a number of occasions, that I would undertake on a pro bono basis...

The Minister of State knows what on a pro bonobasis means. Some colleagues would not know on a pro bonobasis from a junkie and-----

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