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

The one thing that undermines public debate on this issue is honesty of approach. I genuinely say we need honesty and we need a full focus on the facts. We should not play politics with this because it is too important. It is too important for women's health and for premature babies who will be born into the future and need a first-class neonatal facility. That is what the new hospital will do. It will go from 35 neonatal beds to 50 and there will not be the same confinement that we have in the current hospital. The current hospital is not fit for purpose. Since 2013, this has been mooted. We are now in 2022, nearly nine years later, and Deputy McDonald wants to delay it another few years and does not seem to want to get what is a modern maternity hospital built. It will take some years yet to get it built once we get sanction.

Honesty is important in the debate. For the Deputy to come in and suggest that a 300-year lease at a nominal rate of €10 a year is somehow not ownership is being dishonest. I have to be clear about that. I do not like saying this-----

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