Independent TD Mattie McGrath has described the latest assessment on the impact of the out of control spending costs associated with the National Children’s Hospital as a damning indictment of the government’s unwillingness to confront the scale of the financial fiasco. Deputy McGrath was speaking after the interim Head of the HSE, Ann O’Connor, told the Oireachtas Health Committee that funding arrangements for new hospitals and nursing homes, as well as ambulances and equipment, under the Ireland 2040 capital development plan will now be all but “impossible” to deliver:
“This has very clearly moved the impact of the National Children’s Hospital back to centre stage in terms of the enormous damage it is doing to the entire health budget for the next number of decades.
The government is simply not telling people the full truth when it comes to the damage that its mismanagement of this project is bringing about.
We have the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Health covering their political backs by saying no projects will be affected, and yet we now have black and white confirmation from the interim Head of the HSE that whole swathes of health infrastructure are in jeopardy.
We need an urgent reassessment of the viability of this project in light of the damning evidence provided by the HSE today.
The government, and in particular, Minister Simon Harris, cannot just sit back and let this health disaster unfold around us. They must take responsibility for this catastrophe and change course immediately before the health service is brought to its knees trying to keep up with the spiralling costs,” concluded Deputy McGrath.
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