Hospital site a risk to children, says top doctor

THE lives of sick children will be put at risk if plans to build a national children’s hospital in Dublin city centre go ahead.

A leading said he fears for the lives of children who will be stuck in traffic trying to get to the hospital, rather than getting the urgent treatment they need. Fin Breatnach, who retired as the country’s top cancer specialist for children last year, said the proposed hospital, on the site of the Mater near Dublin’s O’Connell street, would be “a disaster”.

The site is about 1.5km from Croke Park and near one of the busiest streets in the country. In an interview on www.irishhealth.com yesterday, Mr Breatnach said: “It is supposedly going to be the only A&E centre for children open for 24 hours, 365 days a year for the city. We are very concerned about parents trying to access the hospital in the middle of a concert or a football match. I’ve been there, I know what it’s like, traffic is at a standstill... I fear very, very much for the lives of these children.”

Last month the HSE insisted that the National Paediatric Hospital will go ahead on the planned site.

It will merge three of Dublin’s children’s hospitals: the Mater, Temple Street and Crumlin.

Mr Breatnach, who worked at Crumlin Children’s Hospital, said the process of choosing a site for the hospital was “flawed”.

“There’s an acceptance by the three children’s hospitals that to put all of the specialist services together in one hospital is a good idea. Our problem is the chosen location. All the staff in Crumlin want is to ensure that if we do build it, it is put in the right place, it is built in a proper way, that it allows sufficient room for expansion in the future, that there’s natural light and space for children and gardens, that there’s parking for families and there’s hostel accommodation for families,” he said.

The HSE said research shows that patients will be able to get to the hospital quickly enough, based on estimates that traffic in the area moves at 32km an hour.

Mr Breatnach said these estimates are crazy: “You cannot average 20 miles an hour at rush hour. Just ask Dublin Bus. They tell us that the average time to get from Blanchardstown, which is not far from the city centre, to town at rush hour is 1.5 hours, and that is using a quality bus corridor. We’re talking about a hospital for children all over Ireland. They could be driving five hours from Killarney and then they hit the M50, by Blanchardstown, and have another two hours to drive. That’s crazy.”

He said 72% of all child cancer patients last year came from outside of Dublin: “Why should three-quarters of the patients who are going to come to use the special facilities be forced to drive into a city centre site?”

The full interview can be viewed on www.irishhealth.com.