This is probably worse than we had thought. I accept the Taoiseach's apology to the family of the deceased person. It should not be necessary for him to have to do this but I am glad he did because of the blatant failure of HSE management to deal with it properly. One can understand the hurt caused.

The HSE website states "welcome to northeast health.ie". It goes on to say that the HSE is working in the north east to develop the most modern, integrated, safe, patient-focused service that has ever been devised in this country and it will be based around one new regional hospital. The Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, said on 14 June 2006 that the Teamwork management services report and the report by Judge Maureen Harding Clark on Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital conclude that the five local hospitals where acute services are provided are not up to standard and that we want to build best international practice supported by a new regional hospital. This apparently has become a phantom entity if we take what the Taoiseach has said here today. He is right to say that designated hospitals within the region should have a service built up that is commensurate with best standards. One can understand the complete frustration of people in that region when the Minister, Deputy Harney, the Government and Professor Drumm have created a pointless crisis where services have been being stripped away from Monaghan and from other hospitals in the locality on the basis that the extra services would be provided in the new regional entity.

Cavan Hospital and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda are bursting at the seams. The medical personnel at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital told me that its section dealing with children is on the edge and lives with pressure every day because of the extent of the work taking place there and the lack of facilities. The Taoiseach has not said whether this was in the national development programme. The Tánaiste said in 2006 that we would have a new regional hospital. We are going to provide international best standard in a new regional hospital. What is in store for the existing five hospitals in the north east? What extra services will be built up in Cavan Hospital and in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda? What services will remain in Dundalk, Monaghan and Navan hospitals? Even if authorisation was given for this to go ahead today, it is a ten or 15 years project and could cost up to €1 billion. What has happened is a pointless crisis. Professor Drumm said this morning that the HSE is entitled to strip out services on the basis that people had an expectation that a regional entity would deal with all of these facilities for the times ahead. Was this new regional hospital ever in the national development programme? Will the Taoiseach publish a list of the capital projects that will go ahead under the national development programme and a list of those that will not go ahead? Can I take it that the commitment of Government and the Ministers for Finance and Health and Children is to ensure that the existing hospitals will have services allocated to them developed to the highest standard? Will he confirm whether the Government intends to go ahead with the regional hospital for the north east which has been the cause of so much angst, frustration and concern for medics, people and patients alike?

Perhaps the Deputy would tell the House whether he is for or against it.

I am for it.

The Deputy is for it. Good.

Unlike the Minister's crowd when——

The Taoiseach without interruption.

Has the Minister changed Departments or is that wishful thinking?

Please allow the Taoiseach to reply.

There are two separate questions here. Deputy Kenny asked the position of the five hospitals in the region, Cavan, Monaghan, Drogheda, Dundalk and Navan. The immediate money in this year's capital programme and the next few years capital programme, as Professor Drumm pledged at recent meetings, is to provide better standards of service in those hospitals and to ensure they have sufficient expert staff at every level to provide a top class service. He has stated publicly on numerous occasions that in some of those hospitals, services would be taken from them and developed in some of the other hospitals. It is his view that mainstream consolidated services would provide the best service from a health and patient safety point of view, build up critical mass and avoid the kind of issues mentioned in some of the recent reports.

That has not happened. It is not a saving.

Obviously, some of the other hospitals in the region, rather than being acute hospitals, will develop services probably more orientated towards day cases and particular services but not sophisticated surgery. He has made that clear. To do that will require significant resources to develop the hospitals that are considered to be the acute hospitals — having coronary care units, intensive care units and the other sophisticated services required. Those services will not be available in all five hospitals. That is the process that is being developed and has been stepped up in recent years. All of the hospitals will be there but will replicate or duplicate the same services or specialties. Clearly that is the position.

The HSE did commission its own independent study. The view of the consultancy firm was for a possible location for one regional hospital in the area. Obviously that would not mean that all the other regional hospitals would close but that would be the centre of excellence that would carry the main specialties. The position is that the HSE has only now advised the Department that it has received a report, prepared by a consultancy firm which it commissioned to carry out an independent study on a possible location for a regional hospital. The study was to take account of the various criteria, looking to the next ten and 20 years of demographics, access, planning, development considerations and other inter-dependencies. I have not seen that report, or a report on that report. I chaired the health committee but I have not seen any outline of the report. I understand it has not been discussed by the board of the HSE. I understand it is on the agenda for tomorrow. The Deputy asked if the Government has signed up to something nobody has seen, that has not been discussed by the HSE and if it has provided resources for that and the answer is we have not made that decision. It would not have been wise if we had made that decision.

We have huge resources in the national development plan for health, some of which are designated and included in the multi-annual report. Every year we issue a detailed report, down to the last few hundred thousand euro of what will be spent by the HSE across the country. It is included in the multi-annual report and block figures are included for future developments which are not specified. If the Deputy asks me if we are going to start this hospital, agree the location and have it built in the space of the next national development plan, by 2012, I do not think it is likely based on the time it takes to undertake major hospital developments. It is not going to happen.

Is it seen as best practice that we agree on one state-of-the-art hospital for the north east? If all the expert opinion is that this should be done, putting main specialties and critical mass of the hospital for that region into one location, the Government will agree. This must come secondary to what the Government is adamant on. We want to see existing services for the present day population — people who need services now — built up and properly maintained and sustained for the future. Longer term plans are for the longer term and we do not want to start closing and displacing services, making life difficult for the present day population, particularly the aged, in advance of having a clearly articulated plan in the long term.

That is what the Government did with cancer services.

That is what the Government has been doing for years.

We are not going to do that, which is why we are putting huge resources into our acute hospital and community services.

The Taoiseach should go to Monaghan.

We will continue with the plan, which is Government policy. That will remain Government policy.

It is not the policy.

If that remains the Government policy, the Government will not remain.

Sinn Féin created a lot of hospitals.