Children’s hospital to scoop €200m from Lotto sell-off

The Lotto sell-off will unlock €200m in ring-fenced funding for the long-delayed National Children’s Hospital, the Government has pledged.

Public Expenditure Reform Minister Brendan Howlin promised that almost half the money from the €405m privatisation deal would be ploughed into the Dublin medical centre due to open at the end of the decade.

However, the money will not come on stream until licence operators make the second part of their payment for the Lotto next year.

A consortium comprising the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which owns the Camelot Group, An Post and An Post pension funds, known as Premier Lotteries won the bidding process for the gambling operation.

“We needed something that would give us a pool of money to build the National Children’s Hospital.

“We are going to have a new-look National lottery which will increase the flow to good causes,” the public expenditure reform minister told RTÉ. Job creation will benefit from part of the remaining €205m windfall from the Lotto sell-off, Mr Howlin said.

The money, along with receipts from the sale of Bord Gáis would feed into an already announced €150m stimulus package aimed at improving county roads, retrofit local authority homes with better insulation and upgrade school buildings.

“That sort of job-rich investment across the country, that’s what I want to use it for,” the public expenditure reform minister told RTÉ.

Some of the Lotto proceeds would also be used to ease national debt levels, the minister said.

The National Children’s Hospital has been beset by delays and false starts since being proposed in the late 1990s.

The Government finally settled on a site adjacent to St James’ Hospital in Dublin last autumn, but Health Minister James Reilly raised eyebrows when he was unable to give a firm date for its completion, stating he hoped it would be finished in “2017/18-ish”.

Planning permission for the new children’s hospital is not expected before the end of next year.

Dr Reilly said he hoped to have a design team in place by Christmas and then to secure the green light from planners for the build by Dec 2014.

The paediatric facility is expected to cost more than €484m and open towards the end of the decade.

The cost is far more than original estimates for the national centre.

The project was first mooted by the Faculty of Paediatric Medicine in Ireland in 1993. Nine health ministers have held office since that proposal was made.

The initial decision to locate the long-awaited facility at the Mater site was undermined by accusations of political interference.