Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister may see this debate as an opportunity to update the Seanad on the "new children's hospital", to use his words. I see this debate as an opportunity to ask him certain questions that he has not satisfactorily answered. This comes down to two core issues. The first issue, which I asked him about at a meeting of the Joint Committee on Health, is whether the massive cost overrun associated with this hospital is associated with the complexity of the St. James's site, as opposed to building this hospital on a greenfield site. The answer to that question is obvious and the political system has been at fault for not holding the Minister to that question.

The second issue is related. The Minister and Government have made much of the ultimate desirability of the children's hospital somehow justifying and excusing all errors along the way. The issue, however, is whether the Minister is failing to build the hospital that is needed to guarantee, inasmuch as is possible, children's health and welfare in future, in particular having regard to the inability to co-locate a maternity hospital at this site. In other words, in addition to the insult to the taxpayer caused by the appalling management of public funds that has occurred, the Minister is adding the future injury to children's health and safety, as many people believe, including eminent medical people associated with the Connolly for Kids project. I am astounded at how little the media and the main Opposition parties have attended to that fundamental question of children's welfare in addition to the question of the spend. The reason is that there has been a failure of the imagination to consider whether even now the Government should withdraw from this location as being the ideal location for the hospital

In recent weeks, we have been drip-fed news of construction delays, huge cost overruns and suggestions that bidders for projects are trying to extract maximum profit from the taxpayer. Above all, we have seen a total lack of accountability and contempt for any notion of democratic accountability of the Government to the elected Members of the Oireachtas. We have been here before. It happened before during the planning stage of the original site at the Mater Hospital. Before that, the same pattern emerged during a wide range of public projects from the Dublin Port tunnel to the building of the motorway network. The scale of the proposed cost overruns for the children’s hospital is almost difficult to believe, the original tender having been €636 million. We have had a gradual attempt to deflect the blame for this catastrophe from the Minister and his Department. We had a remarkable statement from Mr. Robert Watt, Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, reported today that the State will no longer commit to projects until the design and price are clear. Is that not an absolutely scandalous statement? Does it not reflect on the shambolic management of public finances and projects that have gone on here?

Initially, the blame was directed at the board of the hospital project and its chairman resigned. Next up, were the bidders for the project who were accused by Taoiseach of "low-balling" their tenders. Last weekend, it emerged that the Government intends to shift the blame yet again by pointing the finger at consultants who made the initial examination of the St. James's site. All I see here is skilful public relations, a sea of headlines and scrum of recriminations that allow the Government to avoid the fundamental question at the heart of this issue, namely, whether it was correct to choose the St. James's’ site in the first place when other greenfield sites were on offer. The Minister's fingers are on this, as are those of the Taoiseach and Senator Reilly. What I hear now is political ass-covering by Government and its supporters in government.