Speed of completion was key factor in locating children’s hospital at Mater

COMPLETING the country’s new national children’s hospital in the shortest possible time was a crucial factor in the singling out of the Mater Hospital in Dublin as the site.

Speed of completion was key, a spokesman for the Health Service Executive (HSE) admitted.

“We are anxious to have the national children’s hospital completed as soon as possible. People have waited long enough for it,” he said.

Also taken into account was the fact that the Mater was situated in the middle of a triangle of hospitals offering adult specialist care.

The spokesman also stressed that the Mater site, while smaller than that at St James’s Hospital, was still big enough to cater for current and future needs.

The New Crumlin Hospital Group, who met the board of Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin, yesterday, felt that the nub of the problem was site size.

Spokesman for the parents’ campaign group, David Fitzgerald, said their main concern was that the Mater site was big enough to accommodate the children’s hospital now and into the future.

“If it is, then the project should be rolled on as quickly as possible,” he said.

But, he said, the size issue did not require an international peer review, as has been requested by St James’s and Our Lady’s hospitals.

“Our fear is that the issue will get stuck in a loop of reviews,” he said.

“As a group of parents we are so weary of discussions and meetings on this issue. We just want to move it on now,” he said.

The choice of site eventually came down to a two-horse race, and at the end it was neck-and-neck between the Mater and St James’s Hospital.

The task force, made up of representatives of the Department of Health, the HSE and the Office of Public Works, decided to list the pros and cons of both sites from a planning and development perspective.

Advantages of the Mater location are the relatively clear site and the fact that a substantial portion of the enabling works required have already been completed.

There would be no problem with planning, and dove-tailing both the adult and children’s facilities would be easy. Also, there was the future availability of Temple Street.

Both St James’s and Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children now say they cannot support the HSE’s decision to recommend the Mater site.