Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The work has not happened and the car park is not of much use to the patients.

We were promised by the Taoiseach, when he had the Minister's job, that the Coombe project would happen at the same time as the national children's hospital project. That has not happened. As I am sure the Minister is, I am talking to the clinicians involved and learning that the conditions are not safe. The Rotunda was promised that, at some point in the far distant future, it will end up on the Connolly Hospital site, but before that happens, there will have to be a model 4 adult hospital. In that context, the Rotunda has repeatedly asked for pretty modest funding to upgrade its existing facilities.

Does the Minister agree that the current conditions in all three hospitals are unacceptable for mothers, babies and clinicians? Does he accept that the delays are unacceptable and that they are delays rather than instances of everything proceeding according to plan? Most important, the only question that matters is whether the Minister has a date, even a year, for when the building of each of these hospitals will begin and, much more important, for when they will open.

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