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

I appreciate the Deputy's concerns. By the way, I know Professor O'Reilly and he is an exceptional oncologist, if it is the same person we are talking about. Covid has had this impact, not the Government. Governments do not want to close down services willy-nilly. There is no agenda. We have allocated more resources to the health service in 2021 than ever before. Historic amounts have been allocated to health. The winter initiative plan alone, with €600 million in funding that we gave in advance to the HSE in October, and it was critical to facilitating the health services throughout the Christmas period and particularly during the third wave. That intervention was, perhaps, one of the most effective proactive interventions in quite a while. It did not get much attention because of the third wave and all that happened subsequently.

I am still at a loss as to what the Deputy is saying in terms of the children's hospital and a radical reappraisal. We cannot pull hundreds of millions out of that now. The topping out has happened and so forth. The Deputy needs to make a call here. What is she actually recommending to the Government? Is she saying we should pull the project? Is she saying we should reduce the scale of the project? I am unclear on this.

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