Stephen Donnelly says children's ICU in Cork 'could have unintended consequences' 

The Minister said that 2023’s health budget for current expenditure is €1.5bn higher than that seen in 2022. Picture: Damien Storan

The Minister for Health has said that while the death of Cork schoolgirl Vivienne Murphy from complications arising from Strep A was “heartbreaking” the introduction of paediatric ICU services in Cork “could have unintended consequences”.

“I will be led by the clinicians on that,” Mr Donnelly told the Oireachtas Health Committee.

“There is a clinical view that we have a national centre of excellence in the national children’s hospital."

If there is a clinical case to be made for a second centre in Cork or elsewhere that’s certainly something I’ll look at and will take very seriously.

“It could have unintended consequences in terms of not being able to find the specialists required to fully staff two centres,” he said, however.

When it was pointed out to him by Fine Gael TD for Cork North Central Colm Burke that planning permission exists for a new paediatric centre at Cork University Hospital, Mr Donnelly said that project is one “I fully support” and that funding for the centre exists, adding however that CUH “needs a lot more than that”.

Vivienne Murphy died in 2019 just ten days after contracting Strep A. When it became clear at CUH that she required immediate surgery she had to wait several hours for a team of specialists to be assembled and a hospital crew dispatched from Dublin to take her to Temple Street Children’s Hospital in the capital.

Mr Donnelly said that it had been “heartbreaking to hear” what had happened to Vivienne. “It was just an awful situation, my sincere sympathies are with her family and their friends,” he said, adding that “there might be some additional training we can look at” in terms of bringing GPs up to speed regarding the danger signs of Strep A.

The Minister also provided an update regarding the new elective hospital slated for Cork, delays to which have previously been vigorously denounced by Mr Burke.

“A design team has been appointed, it’s in place, it’s bringing forward the planning permission and is working on a detailed design,” he said, adding that his expectation is that the hospital will be able to move to tender by the fourth quarter of 2023.

It’s going to be a game-changer for the region, it has been a long time coming.

Mr Donnelly, who was before the committee to discuss the revised health spending estimates for his Department, also gave an update regarding the pandemic bonus of €1,000 for frontline workers, saying that only a “small” number of people are still yet to have received the payment.

He said that “to date 727 funding applications have been received, and 625 have been processed, though he added that “about 90% of submissions had errors in them”.

When it was put to him by committee chair Sean Crowe that “the goodwill has gone out of the payment”, he replied that “the reality is €208m in taxpayer’s money has been sent out”.

The Minister said that 2023’s health budget for current expenditure is €1.5bn higher than that seen in 2022.

He said that it is not possible to put a timeline on a recent Government commitment to provide 1,500 additional hospital beds, but said its delivery is “likely to be over several years and budgets”.