Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

When the Taoiseach was Minister for Health he said that short of an asteroid hitting the planet, the national children's hospital would be built for €700 million by 2020. It is currently double the cost; it could end up at €2 billion and it will not have its doors open until 2025.

The national children's hospital is just one of a long list of public capital projects that are way over budget. It seems that we if we put the word "national" in front of a capital project, we immediately increase the costs and lengthen the time. The same is true for the national broadband plan, NBP, and the national maternity hospital.

The overspend on the children's hospital is now swallowing up vast capital expenditure that should be going into other projects, such as primary care centres, critical care beds in Cork, a major trauma centre in Cork, a radiation oncology unit in Limerick, the restoration of Wexford Hospital and the long-awaited national maternity hospital. It is really important that we ensure that those projects are not deleted as a result of a massive overspend that is now affecting the national children's hospital.

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