Independent TD Mattie McGrath has said the decision by government and the major political parties including Fianna Fail, Labour and Sinn Fein, not to support a motion calling for an independent investigation into a possible site transfer for the National Children’s Hospital will come to be seen as a tragic and wholly avoidable scandal.
Deputy McGrath was speaking after a Motion he brought forward along with members of the Rural Independent Group and several other Independent TD’s, such as Carol Nolan, Mick Wallace and Clare Daly, was defeated earlier today by 113 votes to 19.
“When we in the Rural Independent Group brought forward our original motion in 2017 calling for a transfer of the NCH to a green-filed site at Connolly, we were deeply saddened to see it defeated.
However given all that has come to pass in the intervening years, and given the national scandal that has emerged with respect to the billions of euros it will now cost to deliver it, we thought the major political parties would see sense and call a halt to this madness.
Unfortunately we, and more importantly the families, clinicians and sick children who have tirelessly advocated for change have now been ignored for a second time.
It is simply incomprehensible that so many TD’s from rural counties, like Deputy Alan Kelly’s Labour Party, chose to throw their weight behind this ill-conceived and bloated government project which will do nothing to address the capacity of sick children in rural Ireland to swiftly access vitally needed services.
Those TD’s who chose to vote against our Motion today will be running for cover in a few years when the scandal of building in a heavily congested and absurdly unsuitable location becomes painfully obvious, ” concluded Deputy McGrath.
