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

It is truly awful for parents to get that phone call when everything has been prepared to make the journey to Crumlin. Many of us as Deputies encounter families where are significant health issues and I always recommend that a child would go to Crumlin because I would always be concerned that there may not be sufficient local expertise to deal with a rare condition. The issue is they should not have to face the kind of cancellations that occur. That is what the new national children's hospital is about. Unfortunately, it is taking time to complete that. That will create capacity. It will also separates outpatients from inpatients and so on. Equally, once a certain level of expertise and treatment has been applied, there should be linkages so that people are not travelling all the time. The nearest hospital could then deal with some issues that invariably arise from time to time with such conditions. However, we will follow it up.

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