Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

In 2016, as Minister for Health, the Taoiseach said the national children's hospital would be built in 2020 for €700 million and, short of an asteroid, it would happen by 2020. Obviously, this was untrue. It was costly rubbish, to be honest. The cost of the national children's hospital has risen to more than €2.2 billion and there is no specific date for its opening. There is an overrun in the budget of €1.5 billion and thousands of children in the interim are suffering significantly owing to the lack of treatment for their illnesses. This is not the only action of complete waste this Government has been involved in. It is squandering taxpayers' money on an industrial scale in a lot of different projects. There are plenty of excuses for it. Indeed, the Government is fluent in excuses. It is also allergic to accountability, which is the key issue. If there is no accountability, there is no change. Given that the Taoiseach was Minister for Health, the buck stops with him. Will he accept personal responsibility for this calamitous failure? What consequence will there be for him?

See this speech in context