Parents demand hospital plan timetable

A TIMETABLE on the redevelopment of the country’s major hospital for sick children must be published immediately, a parents’ lobby group is insisting.

Starved of proper investment for decades, Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Dublin is in crisis, the New Crumlin Hospital Group claims.

It’s a situation that warrants more than a ministerial commitment to turn the archaic hospital into one that best meets 21st century needs.

The group says the project team, established by the minister two months ago to plan the development, has not yet produced a timetable on how work would progress.

The parents’ appeal follows commitments made by the health minister when he met the group last February.

They have since written to the minister reminding him of his promise to have a timetable prepared.

“Without this timetable the redevelopment process could easily drag on for years without anyone being accountable. This cannot be allowed to happen,” said the group’s chairperson, Karl Anderson.

“We do not want to see a repeat of the shamefully slow progress witnessed with the development of the new theatre block that has taken 15 years to develop and will only be finished at the end of this year,” he said.

Mr Anderson says staff and patients at the hospital deserve to know how long more they must endure the outdated and grossly inadequate facilities revealed by the Pollock Report last March.

“We are not out to get the minister. What worries us is that while he is committed to the redevelopment, it might take forever without a timetable.”

The project team is due to deliver its report at the end of December. The minister has now stated that once the report is produced the project will immediately proceed to design stage.

A spokesperson for the minister says he remains fully committed to the redevelopment of the hospital and that officials from his department will be contacting the group this week.

“There are seven stages in the building of a hospital and unless there is a deadline that everybody knows they have to work to it will just go on and on,” said Mr Anderson.

For the last 12 months the single-focus group have been working to get Crumlin Hospital at the top of the national agenda, a bid that has been helped by the RTÉ documentary series Our Lady’s, which concludes tonight .

Members of the group will appear briefly on the programme to state that they themselves did not realise just how bad things are at the hospital until they commissioned a major independent audit during 2002.

“Up to then it was all anecdotal evidence but we needed more than that to drive our campaign.”

The TV series of six programmes has also boosted their campaign. “Viewers could see the cramped conditions with consultants having to talk to parents in corridors. Out-patients is just a nightmare.”

Mr Anderson says it’s hard enough to watch children in distress but it’s even more horrific to see them in a hospital where many of the facilities are below the minimum standard and need to be replaced.