Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)

Sure we all know that. That is why we have been waiting years for the hospital to open. The Tánaiste was the Taoiseach for some of the last five years but before that he was the Minister for Health. The deadline for opening this hospital has been missed 15 times. That is crazy. The Tánaiste is right that children are waiting for this hospital. We know it is state-of-the-art. Not only has the deadline been missed 15 times, but this project has gone from €650 million up to €2.2 billion and we are not sure that this will be the final cost. I put it to the Tánaiste that he personally signed off on this contract. Accountability starts when the Tánaiste starts accepting responsibility. On the day that we have been told the project is delayed again, that it will not see patients until June 2026 at the earliest and that the CEO is saying he is not confident in that date, can the Tánaiste not at least acknowledge that he got this wrong, that he should not have signed this contract, and that the contract he signed, which was build-as-you-go, was a contract with no plan and that it was wrong? This is why we are in a situation where over the last five years the Government has missed its targets 15 times and this project has ballooned out of control.

See this speech in context