I want to raise the issue of the national development plan and, in particular, health infrastructure and the delivery of it under the national development plan. For many of the Members in this House who support the Government each week, we want to know that our colleagues in Cabinet are making the national development plan a priority and that those projects within it are a priority. However, more importantly, we want to know that the mechanisms are put in place to ensure the timely delivery of critical infrastructure. I welcome the Minister for Health's recent publication of the sectoral plan which allocated almost €10 billion to the area. That is the most amount ever recorded for the area of health. I appreciate that will amount to €1.5 billion alone in 2026. The way we will judge the performance of the people we support in here will be on the delivery of projects and the way we will be judged will be on the delivery of specific projects in each of our constituencies. I want to raise some of those projects with the Tánaiste because that is how the Government will be judged. Long-standing projects include Beaumont Hospital, the Finglas primary care centre, Teach An Saol in Ballymun, which I know the Tánaiste has visited, and the redevelopment of the National Orthopaedic Hospital at Cappagh. The €30 million allocated for Beaumont Hospital was very welcome and I know there are colleagues in the House, like Deputy Ó Muirí, Deputy Heneghan and my party colleague, Deputy Brabazon, who are working with the hospital to ensure the 20-bed cystic fibrosis unit is delivered later this year and that the 95-bed inpatient unit and the new emergency department are delivered. We want to see clear timelines for those projects. As we have learned, being in the capital plan alone is not enough. I also want to raise the issue of the primary care centre in Finglas which has been bogged down in a lot of planning over time. However, we are now getting to the point where enabling works, like the moving of pitches to facilitate new sports facilities as part of the primary care centre and so on, are all starting. Again, we want to make sure the HSE prioritises that project. Teach An Saol, which the Tánaiste has visited, is a centre for those with acquired brain injuries. We had a very welcome visit from Bernard Gloster and we have a commitment that the project is now at design and tender stage. We hope that will be concluded by the summer of this year and that we will move to have a new facility where the new national nuero team will also be in place. However, clear timelines are needed on that too. Anyone who has visited Cappagh Hospital - I visited it with the Tánaiste's predecessor, Leo Varadkar - will know that the old nightingale wards are awaiting replacement. There is a master plan that is crying out for investment. I would like to see more in the capital plan when it is published, which I believe may happen in the next number of weeks. We want to see clear timelines and we need delivery. That is in every constituency across the country.

Sentiment score: 0.30

The Tánaiste identified a particular matter there. For a long time when we had no money in the country, we had multistage processes to show that projects were progressing but they were not actually getting anywhere. We are now in a situation where we have plenty of money and where the multistage processes are delaying projects. That does not happen often. It is important to have public scrutiny of public money, but we need to see delivery. I do not doubt commitment of the Minister for Health on this. However, people at every level within the HSE need to know these projects are desperately needed because of the increase in our population and on foot of new and emerging needs. They are also desperately needed because Beaumont Hospital is over 40 years old. It was a state-of-the-art hospital when it was built, but it now needs critical investment. Equally, we have a desperate shortage of GPs in Finglas. GPs are an incredibly important in the context of people seeking to access healthcare. As a result of the demographics that obtain, Finglas is not as attractive as other areas where people might pay for private doctor visits. It is often entirely reliant on medical cards. That is all the more reason why the HSE should provide a primary care centre.

Sentiment score: -0.07