National children's hospital cost and delays
Deputy Doherty attacked the repeated delays and escalating cost of the national children's hospital, saying deadlines had been missed many times and costs had ballooned. The Tánaiste defended the project, criticised Sinn Féin's record on a Belfast hospital contract, and the exchanges degenerated into procedural shouting before the Chair moved on.
Sure we all know that. That is why we have been waiting years for the hospital to open. The Tánaiste was the Taoiseach for some of the last five years but before that he was the Minister for Health. The deadline for opening this hospital has been missed 15 times. That is crazy. The Tánaiste is right that children are waiting for this hospital. We know it is state-of-the-art. Not only has the deadline been missed 15 times, but this project has gone from €650 million up to €2.2 billion and we are not sure that this will be the final cost. I put it to the Tánaiste that he personally signed off on this contract. Accountability starts when the Tánaiste starts accepting responsibility. On the day that we have been told the project is delayed again, that it will not see patients until June 2026 at the earliest and that the CEO is saying he is not confident in that date, can the Tánaiste not at least acknowledge that he got this wrong, that he should not have signed this contract, and that the contract he signed, which was build as you go, was a contract with no plan and that it was wrong? This is why we are in a situation where over the last five years the Government has missed its targets 15 times and this project has ballooned out of control.
Comment on this
The sheer hypocrisy of the Deputy. It was only in March of this year that the First Minister of Northern Ireland, who is the Deputy's party's vice president, said that she was delighted that £671 million would be spent on a state-of-the-art children's hospital at Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital. Ladies and gentlemen, who was that contract with? Does anyone know? It was BAM: the same developer building the hospital in this jurisdiction.
Comment on this
Not only was the contract signed with BAM, do you know what happened then? It pulled out. As a result, Sinn Féin has further compounded the delays to the delivery of the project. Not only that but the children's hospital that it is delivering in Northern Ireland and that Sinn Féin's First Minister and vice president welcomed is more expensive per square metre than the children's hospital we are delivering in this jurisdiction.
Comment on this
They are not my words; they are the words of the Parliamentary Budget Office in the Oireachtas. That office has looked at the hospital Sinn Féin is presiding over in the North and the hospital we are presiding over here and it found that Sinn Féin's is more expensive than the one we are delivering.
Comment on this
You are very lucky you are not out of a job.
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You will not even acknowledge that you made a balls of it.
