Review due of children’s hospital site

THE possibility of relocating the proposed new children’s hospital from Dublin city centre to a site off the M50 has been discussed by incoming Taoiseach Enda Kenny with those driving the development.

Mr Kenny and Fine Gael health spokesperson Dr James Reilly met with Eilish Hardiman, chair of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB), in November and enquired about the estimated cost of building the hospital off the motorway.

Mr Kenny pledged to review the project during the general election campaign and, yesterday, Dr Reilly said that the issue “has to be fully reviewed with all the facts on the table”.

“Specifically, we are given to understand that a 440-bed hospital of this nature should cost €440 million. If it transpires that the additional cost of €200m is due to this hospital’s location, then this is not something, in such a deep recession, that we can afford to ignore,” Dr Reilly said.

The current cost of building at the Mater site is about €650m, but Dr Reilly said he understood each bed should not cost more than €1m, and the extra €200m was down to factors such as “having to go down so far in the ground because of car parking, etc”.

Dr Reilly said the new Government needed “an unbiased outside opinion” as to whether the hospital would be better located at a greenfield site or at the Mater, where €16m has been spent on progressing construction work.

Dr Reilly said he had received “several emails from interested parties” in relation to developing the new hospital close to the M50. Dr Reilly also met with solicitor and property developer Noel Smyth “about a year ago” to discuss his proposal to construct a new children’s hospital.

In 2007, Mr Smyth offered to build a national children’s hospital at cost price, but the offer was turned down and the government pressed ahead with plans to build on the campus of the Mater Hospital.

Dr Reilly said he believed Mr Smyth’s proposal “sounded feasible,” but that, if given the role of health minister, he would like to meet again with the hospital development board to “see all the facts”. Dr Reilly said he would also like to meet Philip Lynch, former chair of the NPHDB, whose controversial resignation last year followed a meeting with Mr Smyth, without the knowledge of then-Health Minister Mary Harney.

Fine Gael has given a commitment to a new national children’s hospital in the Programme for Government.

According to a report in the Irish Medical News, the estimated saving of co-locating the new hospital on the Mater campus, in comparison to a standalone option, is €2.5m per annum.