Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The national maternity hospital project was first announced in 2013. That is now eight years ago. Like the national children's hospital, the real scandal of the development are the skyrocketing costs. In 2018, the original cost was in the region of €150 million. In 2017 and 2018, the costs had risen by over 100% to an estimated €350 million. In 2021, last Friday in fact, we were told by the Minister for Health that the building infrastructure costs have been priced at €500 million. Further commissioning costs, including fit-out and transferring an entire hospital to a new site, will be a further €350 million. That is €800 million, which is four times the original estimate.

We have to look at the utter lack of competence of the Government, and official Ireland, to manage major projects, such as the children's hospital, broadband and everything else. The ineptitude is frightening. We will have to get some foreign authorities in, I mean outside people, who will oversee this and bring it to book. It is disgusting and is just madness. Any business would not survive a week if it behaved like that. As I said, this is the real issue surrounding the national maternity hospital.

Taxpayers will once again be left to carry the can, as always. They are sick, sore, sorry and tired of this. How, eight years on, can building work on the site at St. Vincent's campus in south Dublin still be at a preliminary stage? You can blame the Religious Sisters of Charity all you like; it has nothing to do with them. Meanwhile, each year, more than 8,000 women continue to give birth in wholly unsuitable, crowded conditions in the Victorian-era building at Holles Street.

Government politicians rehearse the same arguments that have failed to deliver the project from the beginning. It is the very same mantra. Under the plan that was once a statement of the State's ambitions for modern healthcare, and for a messy compromise rooted in a century of official neglect in the same area, the Government will build an €800 million hospital on this site, if it ever gets to build it. This is where the problem is. I am very concerned.

Only yesterday, Tuesday, 22 June, the St. Vincent's Hospital Group stated it must retain ownership of the site the new national maternity hospital will be built on. This means the hospital group is happy to proceed with the arrangements with the Religious Sisters of Charity. I heard the Minister say on radio last Sunday, and on "Morning Ireland" this morning, that he was going to meet them. When will he meet them? Why not sit down and talk to them rather than bashing them up and down the country and everywhere? Why not meet them, sit down and respect them for what they are and what they have done for this country?

Clearly, this announcement from the hospital can be viewed as a direct message to Government parties to stop playing politics with this issue. That is what the Government is doing. In a statement, St. Vincent's Hospital Group stated it is "more than willing" to meet the Government to discuss the relocation of the hospital from Holles Street. However, it added: "For the delivery of integrated patient care on Elm Park Campus, [St. Vincent's Health Group] must retain ownership of the site." That is their position. Why not meet them and talk to them? As I said, the whole saga this week is now more to do with the by-election in Dublin Bay South. It is a sad state of affairs that we can kick the Sisters up and down the street and all over the country and bash them.

Deputy Tóibín is right. There is an apartheid, a bigotry and hate speech here, which we are jumping up and down every day of the week talking about. Horrible things were done by some members of different orders and by priests. Are we still going to bash all the rest, the good ones, forever? These are good people that have given so much service to educate our people and run the hospitals. When the matrons ran the hospitals they were clean, there was no MRSA and they were run properly, not like the shambles of a health service we have now. It is appalling the way language has been used, the way the Sisters have been harangued, bullied and sullied, and that the Minister will not sit down to meet them.

Members of the Government would rather try to gather votes in the by-election. They delay and procrastinate while the good Sisters, up and down the country, who educated most of us, have their good names tarnished and destroyed. I have no truck with the bad ones; they should be rooted out and dealt with. Anyone who suffered abuse, and I met someone outside today, should be compensated and helped. However, the bashing of religious orders in this House makes me sick to my core. It is a Christian country but the unchristian attitudes to our religious are shockingly disgusting. The Taoiseach, Tánaiste and everybody else has engaged in it. The Tánaiste started this off because of the Dublin by-election. There was a big repeal vote in that constituency, around 70%, and this is the electorate they are playing to. It is so sad they have dumped the Sisters under the bus but, worse than that, have allowed women give birth to babies in hospitals that are totally unfit. Why does the Government not go and buy a site elsewhere and leave the Sisters alone? It should buy a site, compulsory purchase order, CPO, it or whatever, and move on.

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