The Tánaiste has a hard neck to lecture this House about decorum in Parliament when he is asked a straight question but cannot answer it and then behaves in the fashion that he has. He has now gone into a sulk.

I would like the Tánaiste to do us the honour of answering a straightforward question. I am referring to an article in The Irish Times where the Tánaiste’s single transferable speech features a couple of times a week. The Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children, Deputy Brian Lenihan, has stated that the proposed site for the new national children’s hospital must be reviewed. This apparently arose in response to the report on Crumlin Children’s Hospital published in The Irish Times yesterday. Deputy Lenihan has apparently said the Government decision on locating the new national children’s hospital must now be reviewed. Does the Tánaiste understand the concerns about this new uncertainty around the future of the national children’s hospital?

If he has not had time to study The Irish Times story, I can tell him the report from Crumlin Hospital apparently said it cannot be shoehorned into the Mater Hospital site. It points out that it is one quarter the size of the existing Crumlin site. It says there are serious problems about access, transport and parking. It says that, ideally, the hospital ought to be built on a greenfield site where the three hospitals could be merged and co-located with a maternity hospital.

The National Children's Hospital at Tallaght makes similar arguments that the reinforcement and implementation of the existing decision will lead to a serious downgrading of the tertiary teaching status of the hospital. The former Archbishop of Armagh, Dr. Robin Eames, met with the Tánaiste's predecessor and the Taoiseach and raised his concerns about the downgrading of Tallaght. He advocated a solution that seems to have merit to many people. He said there ought to be a new national children's hospital under single governance with a campus on both the north side and south side of Dublin. He makes this argument based on the circumstances that force parents with sick children to traverse this city through heavy traffic congestion. A national children's hospital should, by definition, serve the nation, and children coming from the south or west ought not to be asked to spend the additional time travelling from Newlands Cross to the Mater Hospital where there is no parking and no adequate space. It is the belief of these experts and the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Lenihan, that the decision made by Government must be reviewed. Is the Government reviewing the decision? Or does the decision to site the new hospital at the Mater Hospital stand?

As the Deputy appreciates, an extensive review of tertiary paediatric services was carried out by McKinsey and Company on behalf of the Health Service Executive. It recommended the establishment of a single — not a dual — tertiary paediatric hospital in Dublin. It also recommended that the hospital be co-located with a leading adult academic hospital. Subsequently, a joint task group was established between the Department of Health and Children and the HSE to advise on the optimum location for a single tertiary paediatric hospital, bearing in mind the recommendation that it be attached to an adult teaching hospital. That decision stands.

Based on that assessment, the task group recommended that the new national tertiary paediatric hospital be located on a site to be made available by the Mater hospital. The Deputy is well aware that a number of contending hospitals sought to have the single tertiary paediatric hospital located on their campuses. A decision was made on the merits and without political interference that it be located at the Mater hospital.

The task group's report and recommendations were then brought to, and endorsed by, the board of the HSE. They were subsequently brought to Government which mandated the HSE to move forward with the development of the new hospital and the urgent care service required to support it. A joint HSE-Department of Health and Children transition group has been established to advance the development of the new hospital.

The Crumlin report has been the subject of constructive discussions between the hospital and the group. The transition group is in the process of engaging consultants to prepare the high level framework brief for the new hospital and it has been agreed that the Crumlin report, to which the Deputy referred, will be taken into consideration in the preparation of the framework. My colleague, the Minister for Health and Children, has also had meetings with representatives from Our Lady's children's hospital in Crumlin and has assured them that she is committed to ensuring the national paediatric hospital will deliver a world-class service for the children of this country.

Based on its work to date the transition group is entirely satisfied that the Mater site has the space necessary to fully accommodate the new paediatric hospital. It is also satisfied that the future tri-location of maternity services on the site with adult and paediatric services in accordance with best international practice can be fully facilitated and represents the best way forward.

To go back to the Deputy's question, the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Lenihan, asked that the Crumlin report be taken into account, which is being done. However, the decision still stands.

I thank the Tánaiste. Given that was a considered, prepared document, I accept that is the decision of Government and that it stands. I would like to retrace the history a little in terms of the manner of presentation by the Tánaiste that McKinsey was recruited by him to report, that it recommended a single tertiary hospital, that it ought to be co-located on the same site as an adult hospital and that the subsequent decision of the group selected and of the Cabinet to nominate the Mater site was taken without political interference. I have no idea why the Tánaiste made that remark because I did not. The Government is entitled to make whatever decision it believes appropriate. I did not allege any Government interference.

However, it is interesting that he should raise that point because in September 2005, the chairman of the board of governors of the Mater Hospital, Mr. Des Lamont, thanked the Taoiseach at an event there for pledging to the hospital the national children's hospital. The significance of that is that it was three months before McKinsey reported and five months before the process, to which the Tánaiste referred, was put in place to select the site. It is very odd that the Tánaiste should refer to political interference. Those were the words of Mr. Des Lamont, chairman of the board of governors of the Mater Hospital. He did not make the information public but it became public.

I am not questioning the Government's right to make the decision but there are serious questions in the minds of parents in my constituency and in the huge catchment area covered by Tallaght Hospital, of the board of governors of Crumlin Hospital and of expert consultants about the wisdom of a single campus and a single tertiary hospital solution in the centre of a crowded city. The people on the north side ought to have access, as should people on the south side, in today's traffic conditions. One cannot attend a funeral at the Mater Hospital and get a parking place. These are the problems ordinary, hard-working parents have to endure. There is no adequate parking space there. It can be a matter of life and death whether a sick child can be transported from one side of this city to the other, and that is leaving aside the fact that it is supposed to be a national children's hospital.

The Tánaiste said that the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Lenihan, said that the Crumlin report will be taken into account. Given that the Crumlin report absolutely contests the wisdom of the decision made, I cannot see how it can be taken into account and how the Government can proceed with the decision.

Either we agree there should be a single tertiary paediatric hospital in the Dublin area or we do not. There are two schools of thought. Some people have suggested there should be more than one such institution. However, the decision of Government and the HSE, based on the McKinsey report, was that there should be only one such institution. No matter where it is located, there will be difficulties for people getting from A to B in modern circumstances. If it is difficult for people to get from Deputy Rabbitte's constituency to the Mater Hospital, it will be difficult for people who live on Eccles Street to get to Tallaght.

I did not advocate that either.

There is no magic solution to that problem.

I asked about the dual campus.

I am making a very simple point. Once we decided, based on expert advice, that there should be a single campus, which was based on the McKinsey report, it followed——

It was not.

It was.

McKinsey did not recommend a particular site.

There are seven minutes for this question and Deputy Rabbitte has already used more than seven minutes. I ask Deputy Rabbitte to allow the Tánaiste to speak.

It recommended a single tertiary paediatric hospital in Dublin co-located with a leading adult academic hospital. I believe the Deputy will agree that once one accepts that recommendation, the hospital must be located somewhere and it will not be convenient for everyone. I am quite satisfied the selection process was objective and without interference. The imputation that McKinsey and subsequently the HSE and the working group were given a political instruction to locate the hospital in one place rather than another is wrong.

McKinsey did not deal with where it should be located.

The Deputy is forgetting the answer I gave, which was that a joint HSE-Department of Health and Children task group was established and the officials on that group decided to make a recommendation. It is wrong to impugn them and to suggest they were "got at" in some way without any evidence whatsoever of that.