I am deeply grateful to you, a Cheann Comhairle, for permitting me to raise the important issue of the construction of Tallaght Regional Hospital. I am aware that I have tried your patience in regard to this issue because of the number of times I have sought permission to raise it by way of Adjournment debate and parliamentary questions. Nonetheless, I ask you and the House to understand the importance of this issue for the people of Tallaght and Clondalkin and the surrounding region which houses just short of 250,000 people.
I will give the Minister the respect of assuming that I do not have to go back over all the arguments again because he is very familiar with them. Will the Minister tell the House that the Government have agreed to go ahead with the construction of Tallaght Regional Hospital? There is growing disillusion among the people in Clondalkin and Tallaght and the surrounding area because of the growing conviction that the Government are beginning to use the question of a regional hospital in Tallaght as a political ploy in the run up to a general election.
I will be the first to welcome a positive decision by the Minister and the first to praise him for making it, because with the single exception of unemployment no other issue means so much to my constituents. It is frustrating that in trying to elicit information from the Minister and the Government we are fobbed off with reference to reviews and studies and told that "the matter is under active consideration". For example, I refer to the reply I got from the Minister of State on this matter on 9 July which said:
The Kennedy Group submitted their report to my colleague, the Minister for Health, Deputy O'Connell, very recently and it is at present under active consideration.
Yesterday, I put that question to the Minister and he replied:
The position is that the report of the Kennedy Group, which were set up to examine the functions, scope and scale of the proposed Tallaght Hospital, together with the funding options for building the new hospital, is under active consideration at present.
The reply does not show any respect to an elected Member of this House for the constituency, that so many months later I get precisely the same reply with no attempt to elaborate or to explain. I do not know whether the Minister for Health is involved in the local Fianna Fáil organisation but councillors are going round the constituency telling people that it is in the bag and that there is no problem. They have gone further and said that the Taoiseach will attend a local function on 6 November at which he will announce the building of the hospital and that tenders will be invited in January. I sincerely hope all that is true, but the Minister should have sufficient respect for the House to take the opportunity here — since it is a matter of such acute concern to people — to say that, having regard to all the considerations, medical as well as employment, the fact that three hospitals are due for closure in the city and that such an enormously populous area must have a general hospital, he has decided to proceed.
I sincerely hope that the Minister will do that and also deal with major questions which arise concerning the size, facilities and procedures which will be available at the hospital and indeed the implications, if any of the involvement of private funding for access to hospital care in the area.