Mary Ann O'Brien (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I join my colleagues in condemning the desperate treatment afforded to the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Alan Shatter, by the cowards who delivered the package to his house. I express my personal and professional sympathy to the Minister.

The Minister for Health, Deputy James Reilly, is definitely throwing the baby out with the bathwater with his White Paper on universal health care. What seems to have slid under all of us is a further delay in the development of the national children's hospital. Why is the Minister speaking about universal health care when we do not even have a building for children to go to when they are sick? Some Monday or Tuesday when Senators are travelling to, or leaving, Dublin, I ask them to drive around the grounds of St. James's Hospital. It will only take ten minutes for them to do so. I have done so and met the people involved. I will outline for Senators the Dolphin report which did not recommend St. James's Hospital as the perfect site. It only met one or two of the criteria outlined by Dolphin. The report stated 5.6 ha would be required, whereas St. James's Hospital extends to only 2.5 ha. Demolition of the hospital will take four to five months. I ask Senators to think about 35 trucks on rotas hauling filthy dusty debris five times a day. There are two small entrances to the hospital grounds. There is hardly a car parking space for the staff. The new plans include an underground car park, but I would love the Minister to come to the House to discuss the issue because the Drimnagh sewers run under St. James's Hospital. Most of the heavy electrical cabling under the hospital has not been mapped. It will be extremely difficult to map and in doing so there will be huge time delays. If St. James's Hospital is to be the location of the national children's hospital, staff will have to park off-site. Imagine people from rural Ireland with a sick child getting out at the Red Cow to get on the Luas to bring the child to hospital.

On the heritage note, there is a very fine Victorian church on the grounds of St. James's that must be destroyed. It reeks of the Mater site scenario all over again. The press reports state that the children's hospital will still be ready in 2018, to which my response is "balderdash". We need to ask the Minister for Health, Deputy Reilly to come to this House. St. James's hospital is not the site for the children's hospital. Action must be taken on this and we need to discuss what should be done.