Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The work on the enabling structures has already commenced. Much work has already happened on the carpark. Much work has been done on a pharmacy.

On the process, I want to bring this to the Government soon. I imagine we will have a rigorous debate. I am happy to bring it to the Joint Committee on Health to tease it out there as well. There is a great deal of interest. What I want to do is make myself available, the officials available and, probably most importantly, the clinicians from the National Maternity Hospital available to engage with the Oireachtas and to answer some very real questions about the concerns that Members of the Oireachtas have. I hope to bring a memorandum to the Government on that shortly. As soon as that is done, we will move forward with the process in terms of planning, development and design and then getting into building the hospital as quickly as possible. As the Deputy has quite rightly said, genuine concerns were raised last year. We have significantly improved the proposal since then. A significant amount of work has gone on but all of this takes time. The Deputy is right when he says that this hospital has been talked about for ten years. Once we are satisfied that we have the legal guarantees around independence and governance, we need to get on and get this hospital built.

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