Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)

The whole system is very impractical. When you want to build a new 96-bed block, it is not just foundations you are building; you are digging down, tanking out a whole basement floor and then going up five or six storeys. The upper floor must be load-bearing, so it can take more units and wards if required. All the services, including sewerage, water and electricity services, are then introduced but then you have to stop because the ceiling is reached. That is totally impractical. It does not meet patient needs and is not achieving the value we should obtain from public expenditure. One has to go all the way through the planning process again and build another block. From public healthcare and public spending points of view, we need to deal with this.

I spoke to an official in the Department recently and he told me that back in the recessionary years, gateways were introduced. It was a way of slowing down projects without killing them off. Let us take out the gateways for all the public projects. There should be only three or four stages from conception and planning to funding and, eventually, building. We do not need additional gateways involving analysing and re-analysing. What these inevitably do is raise the cost, and that is the last thing we want.

I thank the Minister for his engagement. I have faith in him. He is going make proposals in the coming weeks but they need to be practical ones that address this matter.

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