11m available to develop children’s unit at CUH

Junior Health Minister Kathleen Lynch has confirmed that funding of €11m has been earmarked for the development of a new children’s unit at Cork University Hospital.

The money more than doubles the circa €4.5m which had been available up to now towards building a two-storey extension on top of the existing in-patient ward. Ms Lynch said the additional funds open up the possibility of an entirely new build.

Paediatric staff at the hospital have repeatedly highlighted the inadequate in-patient facilities and have called for the existing facility to be flattened and replaced with a state-of-the-art ward.

Until now, this had not been considered possible due to funding shortages.

However, Ms Lynch said yesterday that the additional monies gave scope for more options to be considered, including the possibility of a new build.

“The money gives us the type of freedom now to examine what our options are and to consider more options than had been looked at in the recent past,” she said. “Hopefully, it will be a new build from the ground up. That is something we hadn’t expected to be able to do.”

Ms Lynch said that while things were still at an early stage and there was always the worry that the money would be lost if not spent, it was a “good day for paediatrics” in Cork.

Up to now, the plan for the children’s unit had been to refurbish the existing in-patient wards and build a two-storey extension above. However, staff have described the in-patient facilities as “unfit for purpose”, with space so constrained that none of the rooms have en suite bathrooms, including the isolation rooms.

Consultant paediatrician David Mullane said that, last week, they had four children in with cystic fibrosis, including one young child recently diagnosed, whose parents were traumatised by the lack of facilities.

“They had to use a commode in a room because all the toilets on the ward were blocked, there was a problem with the sewerage,” said Dr Mullane.

He said hospital staff very much welcomed the prospect of additional funding for the children’s unit and that, ideally, they would like to build from scratch, but that senior management at the hospital had ruled out this possibility at a meeting with paediatric department heads this week.

Dr Mullane said that, as far as hospital management was concerned, they were sticking to the original plan of refurbishment and a two-storey extension.

However, Dr Mullane said he would be “more than happy to tear up the plans” and go back to the drawing board if the end result was a new build, even if it meant further delays — the existing ward should have been decanted by now to allow work to start.

“We are eager to get it right. We don’t want to be stuck here in another 20 to 30 years when it’s even darker, drearier, and busier,” he said.

Ms Lynch said that University College Cork would be a central part of the new development — which will include a paediatric academic research facility. She said whatever the final decision in relation to the unit, it would be “based on the best possible advice”.