Linda Dillon's is a voice of blinding sanity in the middle of the maelstrom of opinions on the location of the new national children's hospital. She knows what she is talking about. Her daughter Alice died after two years of illness during which she was treated at Our Lady's hospital in Crumlin, writes Mary Raftery.
Ms Dillon was speaking on radio yesterday as the chairwoman of the New Crumlin Hospital Group, representing parents of sick children. Asked about the appropriate site for the new national children's hospital, she said: "Our view is very much to get on with it. It doesn't matter where. Our focus is to see a hospital built at the end of this."
She added that it would be a sad day if people got bogged down in the issues of access and traffic congestion. Her group has fought for five years to secure recognition of the need for a new, centralised facility for children. Amid the rows and the calls for more reviews and international experts to analyse the site, these parents are beginning to see it all slip from their grasp.
What makes this issue so difficult is that as you listen to each proponent of the various arguments over the site, you tend to agree with them, wavering and swaying almost daily. It must be accepted that they all speak with the best interests of sick children at heart, which is perhaps what makes each of them so compelling.
You certainly have to sit up and take notice of someone like Dr Fin Breatnach of Crumlin hospital, probably one of the most outstanding paediatricians in this country. His views on the impracticalities of the Mater site are well-argued. The questions he raises demand clear answers, which so far have not been forthcoming, but perhaps cannot be until the planning for the new hospital is more advanced.
Given the critical track record of Crumlin in the provision of treatment for children - it is the leading such purveyor in the State - its views are crucial to the planning of the new centralised facility.
That Crumlin, and indeed Tallaght Hospital (which incorporates the old Harcourt Street children's hospital), should feel so excluded from the process is surely an indictment of the way the HSE and Department of Health have set about it.
However, that to a great extent is in the past. A decision has now been taken. It is to locate the new children's hospital within the Mater hospital complex. The Government have said they are not for turning on the issue.
We, the people, elect a government to take decisions of this kind. It in turn is accountable to us for them. The problem here is that the governing authorities of both Crumlin and Tallaght hospitals are accountable to no one but themselves. They are independent fiefdoms, which depend wholly on taxpayers' money for their existence, and yet do not answer to the State.
This reality certainly points up sharply the insanity in the way we run our health services. It may come as a surprise to many that within the Dublin area there are only two State-owned hospitals (barring psychiatric facilities). These are Loughlinstown hospital on the south side, and Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown.
Every other publicly-funded hospital in Dublin, including all the children's and maternity hospitals, are in private ownership. The same pattern, incidentally, applies throughout the rest of the country.
These hospitals are owned either by various religious groupings or by private, trust-type organisations. The reasons for this are largely historical, with ownership reflecting the interests which initially founded the hospitals mainly during the 19th century.
While they all undoubtedly function with the best interests of patients in mind, it does mean that proper, centralised, democratically accountable planning within our health services has been a nightmare.
The development of a single national facility for children is the first real attempt by the State to tackle head-on this private ownership issue. The new children's hospital will be unambiguously owned by the State, in other words, by us all.
While, as we know too well, the State can at times be wrong-headed, incompetent and inefficient, it is at least ultimately answerable to us through the democratic process. The idea that a privately-owned hospital such as Crumlin can go off on its own and set up in complete opposition to what is overwhelmingly agreed to be in the best interests of children - namely to have only one tertiary children's hospital in the country - is simply unacceptable.
The announcement by the board of Crumlin that they are now examining this as an option (together with the construction of a new, presumably also privately-owned maternity hospital on their current site), flies in the face of the previously unanimously endorsed view of the need for centralised planning in this area.
When confronted with such a threat from a privately-owned facility, no matter how excellent its medical track record, the Government has no option but to stand firm.