Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The bottom line is that one of the central findings is an absence of any challenge of public infrastructural projects at Government level. That is stated in the final recommendations. There was a lack of challenge, with nobody questioning anything about the project because the Government was too politically invested. The Government line, which the Taoiseach has stated, is that it had nothing to do with him or the Minister for Health. The Taoiseach will remember that the Government reviewed the work of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board last August and decided to re-appoint the entire board. This happened more than nine months after the Minister became aware that a significant overrun of costs was on the way. It was at the end of a period during which senior Ministers seemed to spend half their time putting on branded hard hats and speaking about how everything was perfect at the hospital. Will the Taoiseach explain why last year he appointed a board which he is now reported in various newspapers to be angry with? Is he sticking to the line that a massive overrun on the project has no implications for any specific projects under the national development plan?

I listened to Deputy Howlin's comments. There is an air of unreality around many of the projects that have been committed. When one compares commitments and announcements with the reality of these projects' progress on the ground, there is a yawning gap between announcement rhetoric and delivery. The health system is in real difficulty and crisis. There is a consistent pattern at the accident and emergency department of University Hospital Limerick, while at Cork University Hospital, there was a code black alert. I referred to the fair deal scheme earlier and quoted from a letter in which it was stated that when funds become available, the funds can be allocated to an individual, but that was written six weeks ago. This is not the demand-led scheme that we believed it to be.

Similarly, €10 million was apparently included in the Estimates for new medicines. How realistic was that from the outset? There was never any prospect of new medicines being made available within the parameters of €10 million. The idea that valid and important forms of immunotherapy are only available to patients via private health insurance is a damning indictment of where we stand after all the advances we made in earlier decades in respect of clinical trials for cancer, developing new drugs and providing new therapies.

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