Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We will update it.

Deputy Howlin asked about the new national maternity hospital. It is our policy that the hospital will be publicly owned and that the land it is on will be in public control. It is important to acknowledge that the National Maternity Hospital, not too far from here, is a good hospital and already has a Catholic ethos. The chairman of the board is the Archbishop of Dublin. He does not attend but its Catholic ethos has not prevented it performing terminations and providing fertility treatment. We should not get involved in unnecessary church bashing when it is not fair and I do not think it is fair on this occasion. Work is being done on the St. Vincent's site. A new pharmacy is being built and works are happening on the car park. Those works have to be done before the new national maternity hospital is built. It is intended that it shall go to tender in 2020. The Minister for Health is ambitious that we can get it started in 2020. At the very least we can get it to tender next year.

On the railway line to Maynooth, I will not irritate Deputy Burton by listing all the achievements of Fine Gael and Labour in the five years that we served together in government. I will mention only those done by Fine Gael, the Independent Alliance and the Independents in the past three and a half years in respect of this railway line. First, we have on order new carriages for a number of railway lines. They are coming from Japan and will be in service by 2021 and will increase by 34% the capacity on the Maynooth, Drogheda------

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