I was not in government in 2017.

I have been in the Government for the last two years and I am determined to get things done-----

-----in this country, and not go on with endless prevarication and clouding of the issue so the hospital does not get built. That will be the outcome, if the Opposition wants it its way. We do not own that land and we cannot dictate what happens to it. If people do not want to cede ownership, they do not want to cede ownership. By the way, I do not see the logic of a compulsory-----

-----purchase order, costing a significant amount of taxpayers' money, being better value than a 300-year lease at €10 a year. I do not understand why the resources that would be wasted on a CPO would not go into the hospital instead. I do not get the logic of the proposition around the CPO five years on. The church is not involved in this, good, bad or indifferent. Surely the Deputy will take the words of Fergus Finlay regarding his experience of what has gone on here. He stated: "Nobody will have a controlling in…

The previous agreement, by the way, had a much shorter lease period. There was very little shouting and roaring about it, actually, after the Mulvey agreement.

There was very little shouting and roaring. The Deputy was in opposition too.

The Deputy will jump up and down when it suits and when the pendulum swings from opinion poll to opinion poll. That is the modus operandi of Deputy Carthy. Deputy Bacik asked a question.

I want to make the point that reference was made to the €850,000 and so on. That only applies if the building is sold or turned into something other than a maternity hospital. The whole purpose of seeking the lease was to build a maternity hospital. The whole idea behind going to St. Vincent's in the first place was co-location, which derived from medical expertise which said the best way to guarantee the safety of women and newborn babies is to co-locate with a tertiary hospital. In my view, that decision was take…

The Deputy should stop accusing members of the Government, who are entitled in a democracy to their points of view on other issues. They are entitled to their views, but the Deputy seeks to blacken people-----

The Deputy just did in her contribution, so she cannot have it both ways. I respect people's views irrespective of what they are. We are in a democracy and I always respect people’s views, particularly in a Parliament. If the Deputy does not trust me, that is fine, but maybe she will trust the clinicians, senior midwives and directors of the hospital, including Mary Brosnan, Martina Carden, Ann Calnan, Geraldine Duffy, Eimir Guinan, Rachel Irwin and Shideh Kiafir. What are they saying? They say they do respect and …

The purpose here is to build a maternity hospital, not any other hospital. The purpose of this exercise was never to buy out St. Vincent's. That was not the objective when Holles Street and St. Vincent's originally decided to co-locate. Let us not mix up the agenda. The agenda was to build a modern national maternity hospital with co-location of expertise in terms of maternal and neonatal care and in respect of a tertiary hospital. In respect of the ownership, the protections in the constitution of the new hospital…

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. As regards the broader picture around energy supply and security of supply, the very strong focus is on renewables and the entire agenda over the next decade or so will be to develop very significantly offshore wind across the east, west and south-west coasts. I believe the next decade will witness transformative investment in wind energy in particular, including offshore wind energy, and will create lots of economic activity on coasts along the western seaboard and in the …

I want to pay tribute to the Carbery Group on winning the overall award for Cork company of the year. Maybe the Deputy should take its example because one of the issues the company champions is net zero-emissions farming. It is way ahead of the game in respect of that. That is west Cork leading and a great west Cork company leading. Perhaps the Deputy should discuss that with the company in terms of how it is going about it and doing it. In respect of the broader issue of self-deception, we got the latest meteorolo…

If we get into all sorts of high doh about very minor issues relative to the enormity of what is coming our way in respect of climate change, it is quite frightening.

I do not mean that in a way of apportioning blame or anything like that. I am saying that, collectively, we need to get a grip here and we need to move.

Deputy Cian O'Callaghan, to be fair, raised this issue last week in the Dáil. I think Deputy Ó Broin raised it also. The Minister responded on that occasion in the Dáil. Separate from the allegations that had been made, the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, has also been made aware of correspondence between the deputy chairman of An Bord Pleanála, Mr. Paul Hyde, and the board secretary, which was brought to the attention of the Minister's Department by the chairperson of An Bord Pleanála. The concerns about a confl…

No. The Deputy asked for a debate last week.

Yes. The Deputy sought a debate on agriculture this week.

We cannot have a debate on everything we might want to debate in the one week. That said, on the point the Deputy has raised, the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, has engaged with the transport operators.

My understanding is that he has and that he will continue to do so. He has connections in Tipperary. He has connections in Cork. He has connections in a lot of places, apparently.