Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I support Senator Clifford-Lee, my party's deputy leader in the Seanad, in her comments on the national children's hospital and the overrun. Statements on housing are listed on the Order of Business and it is appropriate that we should raise the housing of sick children and the building in which they will be housed. Senator Marie-Louise O'Donnell tabled a Private Members' motion in the previous Seanad, the aim of which was to try to prevent the Government from selling the national lottery licence. We were told at that stage that the cost of the hospital would be €450 million and that the sale of the national lottery licence would go more than half way towards providing funding for this much-needed facility.