Call for emergency hospital on city’s northside

A county councillor is campaigning to have a new greenfield emergency hospital developed on the northside of Cork.

Pat Burton’s call comes after one of Cork University Hospital’s leading doctors warned the HSE needs to start planning for a new emergency hospital on the outskirts of the city.

Earlier this month, Professor Paul Redmond said sustained construction at CUH over the past decade meant space was at a premium at the hospital. Budgetary cutbacks, he said, were having a serious impact on the campus with wards closed and trolley numbers increasing.

The Blarney-based Fine Gael councillor said he was delighted to hear Prof Redmond’s comments as he had been pushing a similar idea as part of the Ballyvolane Masterplan — being drawn up as a response to projections that the population of Cork City and its wider region will grow by 110,000 by 2020.

Ballyvolane has been designated as an area ideally suited to accommodating planned future growth and providing “sustainable communities that have high levels of quality of life and future adaptability”.

“The Ballyvolane masterplan is looking at a 700-acre zone. I think that the area between Ballyvolane Junction and Whites Cross would be an ideal site for a large hospital campus.

“You would have a large site that could be zoned for health now and you could build a community through the establishment of a new hospital. In time, you would also have the transport links from the planned Northern Ring Road which would link Mallow, the Dublin Road and the South Ring,” Mr Burton said.

“This isn’t something that we’re planning for tomorrow but, if we are to treat it seriously, it must be planned for now. You can’t just fill an area with 3,500 houses. You need employment and facilities. It would also be the end of this thing where people living on the northside all go down the hill to go to work. There is such a need to re-balance the city and not have all the jobs and developments on the southside,” the councillor added.

In his comments, Prof Redmond had suggested an area around the Jack Lynch tunnel as an ideal site for an acute hospital.