Children's Hospital Overspend Reaches Ridiculous New Heights
It has been revealed today that the new National Children’s Hospital is on track to cost a whopping €2.24 billion, over 500 million euro more than the 2019 estimate of €1.7 billion, and over €1.25 billion more than the €983 million approved by the Twenty-Six County government in 2017. This figure is sure to rise before the final completion of the project.
Many health projects have undoubtedly been impacted by this cost over-run - a result of gross incompetence by government and state agencies in relation to major infrastructural projects and public monies. This is a well-established pattern.
A handful of private companies operate a virtual monopoly when it comes to the construction of public hospitals, schools, motorways and other pieces of vital public infrastructure. The political establishment and senior public servants then funnel tens of billions of euro of public monies to these companies without securing maximum value for the taxpayer. They find it easy to write blank cheques with other people’s money!
But the ones paying the real cost of this incompetence are not the gombeen TD’s responsible for green-lighting the greed of these property developers, it is the sick and the vulnerable paying with their lives.
The local community in which this project is being built are also paying the price for this incompetence too with their neighbourhood being subject to increased levels of noise and air pollution for an extended time period due to constant delays in finishing the hospital.
Éirígí is calling for this dysfunctional health service to be replaced with one that is efficient, secular, single-tier and publicly owned. Such a service would ensure that all our people would have access to the high-quality healthcare they deserve.
In the New Republic that we want to help build, there will be no place for individuals or corporations to grow rich off the back of the suffering of others. Everyone, from the top to the bottom, will be held to account for their actions and inaction.