Sinn Féin has claimed the Government is funding “vanity projects” while at the same time imposing recruitment embargoes across parts of the health service, in a row over the six-figure sum spent on another “designer” bike shed.
The party’s finance spokesman, Pearse Doherty, highlighted in the Dáil the €127,000 cost of a bicycle shelter for University Hospital Kerry.
“We had a €336,000 Leinster House bike shed. We’ve had almost €100,000 spent on a bike shed at Holles Street [National Maternity Hospital] and now we have another bike shed,” he said, citing details reported by The Kerryman.
He compared the HSE sanction of the bicycle shelter, which doubles the number of spaces from 20 to 40, to its decision to pause recruitment in non-frontline roles across significant parts of the country to deal with overspending in the health service, which hit €250 million for the first quarter of the year.
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Describing it as a “culture of arrogance”, he said it was “another slap in the face to the ordinary people right across this country, workers and families who are already at breaking point”.
The Donegal TD said “the most outrageous part of all of that is there were vastly cheaper options available” for the bike shelter, ranging from €7,000 to €21,000. “What’s the excuse for this?”
Doherty said: “This isn’t just bad luck. It’s not oversight. This is pure waste.”
The Kerryman reported that the HSE had examined cheaper options but they were deemed inappropriate or suboptimal, with one of the options lacking suitable storage for e-bikes or cargo bikes.
Replying on behalf of the Government, Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee defended spending on cycling infrastructure for hospital staff.
She said nobody agreed with what happened with the Leinster House bike shed “and that’s why the OPW have put in place new measures. That’s why they’ve put forward changes to make sure that something like that can’t happen again.”
The Kerry hospital project “went through the procurement process, it went through the proper guidelines, and what was delivered was what was decided was needed for the hospital in the place that it was located”.
She added: “We need to make sure that we have a balance, that we are investing in active travel, that we are encouraging people to cycle to work where they can, that we are investing in our communities, that it’s not just going directly into the services and the infrastructure as well.”
Every Minister and TD wants to make sure “every taxpayer’s penny that is spent, that it’s spent well, that it goes to where it needs to go, and that it goes to those who need it”.
She pointed to the €3 billion national broadband plan – “delivered on time, on budget and is ahead of schedule” – along with “large-scale transport projects that again are coming in on time and within budget in the health sector”.
They included acute facility expansions in 2025 in Cork University Hospital, Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown and the Mater hospital. “They’ve all been delivered on time and on budget.”
Meanwhile, the Dáil Public Accounts Committee is to seek details from the HSE about the background to the bike shed at Kerry University Hospital.
Committee chairman John Brady of Sinn Féin said it would look for documentation on the other options available for the provision of the bike shed and on why none of these were pursued.
