Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy McDonald for raising this issue. Week after week in the Dáil, she and other Deputies, including Government Deputies, raise the ongoing concerns relating to the need to meet the healthcare needs of sick young girls and boys and the improvement we have to make to how healthcare is provided to our youngest. That is why the national children's hospital is so important and why its completion, including the provision of surgery facilities, additional care facilities and bedrooms, is fundamental to how we can, in a far better way, rise to the challenge of meeting the healthcare needs of our youngest. That is why this hospital is needed and why, when it is open, it will make a massive difference to our ability to meet the healthcare needs of our youngest, particularly those with the most difficult and sensitive healthcare needs.

The message from the Government regarding where the project stands is clear. We want the hospital open as soon as possible, with the rooms and surgery facilities completed. We want to see a building that is currently a structure turn into a hospital providing state-of-the-art care to those who need it most. The progress on this hospital has been delayed, as the Deputy said. On the recent track record of delays relating to the project, due to decisions made by the contractor, in the past four years the project has been delayed 14 times. In the past 12 months alone, it has been delayed four times.

Deputy McDonald asked what the Government is doing about this and what steps it is taking to ensure that the hospital is completed and can meet the healthcare needs of our children. The National Paediatric Hospital Development Board, which is responsible for the oversight of the hospital, is acting on behalf of the Government in respect of the project. On our behalf, the board is taking the necessary steps to ensure the contractor is held to account and to get the hospital open as soon as possible. The board is challenging the contractor on costs and taking the right action to challenge the delays and ensure the right amount of resources are present on site to ensure the hospital opens. The delays that are taking place at the moment are unacceptable. The Government wants to see the hospital open. The board is acting on our behalf to take the steps necessary to allow it to open and to be turned from a building into a hospital that gives care to those who need it most.

On the charges Deputy McDonald made about the Taoiseach and the Government, on one hand, she says she wants us to better meet the healthcare needs of the young and, on the other, she is always against everything that relates to this hospital. She says she has great concerns about the way the costs have gone up, but when the Government takes any steps to deal with those costs, she is critical of that. She says she wants to see the hospital open as soon as possible, but when we take the steps needed to lead to the hospital opening, she stands up in the Dáil and criticises that as well. It is the same old Sinn Féin. We see it again in what she has said today. When you are against everything, you are for nothing.

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