Seán Kyne (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the Chamber, as always, and I thank him for his visit to Moycullen, County Galway, last Friday, where he opened the Moycullen primary care centre. It is the first of its type in Connemara, and I hope it is the first of many to come. It is only when you see the team photograph outside the building that you appreciate the amount of people working there and in conjunction with other facilities in the area and the range of services they will be putting on for local people in the Moycullen community. I welcome that.

The Minister is very aware of the range of plans for Galway. In response to my questioning of the CEO of the HSE, Mr. Bernard Gloster at the Joint Committee on Health last week, Mr. Gloster accepted that Galway is further behind the curve than everywhere else when it comes to hospital infrastructure.That was due to the fact there was a debate as to whether a new hospital should be at Merlin Park or University Hospital Galway, UHG, which has gone on for too long. I believe the Minister said something similar in Galway in the past week on the "Galway Talks" show with Keith Finnegan on Galway Bay FM with respect to the debate and the fact we certainly need to move on from that and progress the plans the Saolta hospital group has.

As I said, for the first time since I became a Member of the Oireachtas in 2011, there is a plan and vision for Saolta, which the consultants, management and everyone are getting behind. That is the main project of the emergency department, ED, maternity and paediatrics, new laboratories, a new cancer centre and much-needed beds, all to be built on the UHG site, and of elective care, starting with the surgical hub in Merlin Park.

The plan and vision have been agreed. It has taken a great deal of time, with many years wasted on options appraisals and all of this debate. It did not progress, there were delays and nothing was happening. To be blunt about it, people in Galway are sick of plans. We want to see delivery of these projects. We want to see progress. The Minister and Mr. Gloster have said that we are further behind the curve than other parts of the country and that our facilities are not up to scratch. We need to prioritise these plans and to progress those which are first up and best-dressed and to get delivery.

I refer to the emergency department, maternity, and paediatrics. The temporary emergency department is now built. I acknowledge that it is somewhat of an improvement. The HSE received planning permission to demolish the old emergency department and we now need to progress the clearance of the site and getting planning permission for ED, maternity and paediatric units.

The strategic assessment report, SAR, took a long number of months - more than six, I believe - to be approved by the Department of Health. I find it shocking that with the processes we have, and after all of these years, we are talking about a preliminary business case. However, those are the stages we have to go through. Hopefully, that will be turned around by Saolta and the Department. We need to prioritise and say a project like this is one that can be delivered quickly. The other ones can progress as well, and if they catch up, so be it, but we need to progress this.

The Minister’s predecessor was in Galway in September 2018. At that stage, Saolta stated that the planning application for the ED would be lodged by Christmas. I saw a detailed design and I do not know how much more detail would be needed. I know there were some changes in the specification because there was a shell and core versus a full design fit-out, but here we are, nearly five years later, and we are still talking about the planning permission being lodged.

The Minister can understand why people do not believe reports and plans. I am not blaming the Minister as I know of the forms, in respect of the system, of the public spending code and of the number of steps that need approval at Government level, but we have waited too long for this.

In 2015, the Tánaiste, Deputy Micheál Martin, asked the former Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, in the Dáil about the emergency department. Enda Kenny said at the time that it was not fit for purpose. It was not fit for purpose then, it had not been fit for purpose for a long time before that and it is not fit for purpose now. We need more than plans; we need to see delivery of this. I am confident that based on the vision from Saolta, and the final agreement with the Saolta management and the consultants in Galway, we can progress this plan. I certainly hope the Minister will endeavour to prioritise the delivery of this and all of the other initiatives and projects which are needed in Galway because they are all very important, not just for Galway but for the region.