Shane Ross (Independent)

I am raising the issue of the run-down of the capital investment and the Government's commitment to the Adelaide and Meath Hospital in Tallaght. Concerns have been expressed by the hospital as the result of recent decisions. It is not just the recent decision on the location of the proposed national children's hospital. While the Adelaide may be losing its children's hospital, for some time there has been a certain amount of disillusionment in the Adelaide at the Government's commitment to the agreements made in 1996.

The main issue is that of tertiary paediatric care in the hospital and its removal. There is a deep feeling in Tallaght that this will dismember the hospital. The Minister of State will not need any introduction to the fact that Tallaght has the largest growing child population in the country. It also has the highest number of women of child-bearing age. The threats to the child and maternity care in Tallaght are not just serious for the hospital and its prevalent ethos but also to the area. The dangers of emasculating the hospital are serious and difficult to understand.

Two issues must be addressed in the threat to Tallaght Hospital. First, there is the real threat to medical treatment for people in the area and the dangers of a fall in standards in quality and quantity of medical attention, particularly in child and maternity care. There is also the danger to the ethics practised at the Adelaide hospital for so long. It is unique in that it protects for minorities the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship which is not practised in other hospitals. The possibility that some of the facilities will be removed from the Adelaide threatens that particular relationship. This is a sensitive area. It is a matter of parents from minority beliefs having to make decisions on requiring medical treatment that may not be acceptable to other denominations. In the Adelaide's case, it is important the pluralist ethos is not removed from the child and maternity care area.

In 1996, the then Government committed to the hospital's charter and its guarantee of minority rights. The danger now is that it no longer seems to consider the commitment to the guarantee is binding. In the light of the children's issue, will the Government consider the proposal made by officials from the hospital? The proposal stated that if the Government insists on having the main children's hospital in the Mater, there should at least be a ancillary one on Dublin's southside. It is not just because it has the fastest growing population in the country. It is also because there are real dangers to children's health if there is only one hospital in Dublin that can treat certain conditions. Yesterday a doctor informed me that there are dangers of children dying because they will not get across Dublin city in time. That is not an exaggeration. It is essential that the Mater is made a hub hospital and that the spokes are in Bray, west Dublin and north Dublin. I urge the Minister of State to consider that. He might also consider the real issue of Tallaght Hospital having been run down from a promised bed capacity of 800 beds to 513 beds and the crisis of under-feeding that existed in 1989.

I wish to make three brief points. We need paediatric hospitals on both the north side and the south side of Dublin. We also need a maternity hospital to be built on the site of the Adelaide Hospital. In addition, we need 200 new public beds in the Adelaide Hospital, as originally promised. Above all, we need academic development so that, as promised, Tallaght Hospital can have new chairs in radiology, anaesthetics and clinical genetics.