Plans for hospital at Mater site could be resurrected

Plans to locate the proposed national children’s hospital at the Mater site in Dublin city centre could be resurrected after management at three hospitals in the area said they were puttingtogether a fresh proposal.

The Mater site, decided upon following a comprehensive consultation process and backed by the previous government, was turned down by An Bord Pleanála in February, plunging the project into doubt.

The planning authority turned down the proposal on a number of grounds, but primarily because the 74m/16 storey-high building would not have been in keeping with the existing buildings in the area.

Yesterday, the master of the nearby Rotunda Hospital confirmed that the Mater, Rotunda, and Temple St hospitals were combining their efforts so as to improve the chances of a fresh proposal for the Eccles St location receiving planning permission.

However, the New Children’s Hospital Alliance (NCHA) urged caution, claiming a new weighting exercise should be carried out to check if other criteria such as space for expansion and parking would be met.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Dr Sam Coulter-Smith said there were desperate capacity issues within the hospital system and the three hospitals had been working for some time so as to push forward with a redrafting of the Mater site plan.

One key element of the new initiative is that the Sisters of Mercy have agreed to include the old Mater adult hospital in a new plan which could reduce the number of floors needed.

The new plan would also include adult, maternity and paediatric services on one site and would bring services within the three hospitals closer together.

It will now be considered by the nine-person task force set up by Health Minister James Reilly in the aftermath of the planning board’s decision. They are due to report back on revised plans for the hospital in five weeks’ time.

Since the decision to turn down the initial Mater site plan, supporters of other possible locations, such as Tallaght or on the edge of Dublin City have expressed a desire to have those locations reviewed.

Dr Fin Breathnach of the NCHA said there needed to be “transparency” over the process of recommending a site for the hospital, particularly as he understood at least 15 sites had been proposed to the review group, from a greenfield area in north Dublin to a site at the Coombe Hospital.

He said space would still be an issue at a revised Mater site, in addition to parking and other issues.

Dr Enda Murphy, lecturer in planning at UCD and the co-author of a 2006 report on the potential sites, said a new accessibility survey needed to be carried out regarding the hospital plan.

The 2006 report found that while the Mater site was more accessible for those people using the hospital in Dublin, the Tallaght site was more accessible when looking at the country as a whole.

He told the News at One it would be difficult to say if the same results would hold true today in the different economic circumstances.

“I would say a new accessibility survey would be quite important here,” he said, adding that this was vital given the curtailment of projects such as Metro North that had originally been factored in to the initial Mater site proposal.