John Cummins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am disappointed with the response but I know the Minister of State gets under the hood of things and clearly, we need to get under the hood of what has been going on here. To go from procuring a design team in 2021 to only having stage 1 completed in quarter 3 of 2023, when construction was due to commence in 2023, does not tally.

Questions have to be asked of HSE estates. What has that office been doing over the past couple of years that it is unable to bring the project through to detailed design and tender? It is unacceptable. There are people in that office that clearly have not been doing their jobs. The Minister of State has to come in and answer questions from me because the stakeholders are asking me where is this project to provide much-needed services for their children. The Minister of State has their best interests at heart, as do I, but there are clearly people sitting in offices who are not thinking of the urgency of this project and have been long-fingering it for whatever reason.

I ask that the Minister of State convene all the bodies and have a meeting in the next couple of weeks on this, pulling in the people from estates and the stakeholders with the Minister of State to get to the bottom of what has gone on here. It is unacceptable a priority project for the HSE and for children with complex needs has not been fast-tracked. When we spoke in 2021, we said those timelines were not quick enough and now we find out they are further delayed.