Cork University Hospital poised for decade of major expansion
Plans for CUH include 70 new beds delivered by the end of this year. Picture: Dan Linehan
One of Ireland’s largest hospitals, with the biggest deficit of adult inpatient and critical care beds, is poised for a decade of unprecedented expansion.
Cork University Hospital (CUH) will get the highest allocation of beds nationally as part of the State’s new bed investment plan.
The CUH group welcomed the Government’s Acute Hospital Inpatient Bed Capacity Expansion Plan which aims to deliver around 3,000 new hospital beds by 2031, or the equivalent of “six large hospitals”.
University Hospital Limerick, where 118 beds are being delivered and where 184 have been committed, will get another 84 between 2025 and 2028, to bring its total new bed capacity to 386.
University Hospital Kerry is in line for 108 new beds between 2025 and 2028, to bring its total new bed capacity between 2020 and 2031 to 142.
However, CUH is in line for the most additional new beds, with 412 due by 2031, most of them due for delivery in the two years before that.
With one of CUH’s new beds described in the plan as “committed”, its overall new beds figure will include 70 beds which will have been delivered between 2021 and the end of this year; 80 more are planned for delivery between 2025 and 2028, with 261 due between 2029 and 2031.
CUH said the beds expansion announcement will help fund its comprehensive campus capital plan, which includes the construction of a new trauma, acute, and critical care (TACC) tower building, which once complete will have around 200 beds and Ireland’s first roof-based helipad.
It has been earmarked for a site to the east of the maternity hospital, facing onto Wilton Rd. It will require the demolition of several existing buildings. It will be built in two, and possibly three phases, pending planning and the HSE’s tendering process. Design work is now under way on the first phase.
The plan also includes the long-awaited new children’s acute care building, which will have 82 beds. It has planning permission, and enabling works are under way, with hopes that pending the outcome of the tendering process, construction will start next year.
The CUH expansion plan includes new cancer wards in the proposed Glandore development, which will have 60 beds. The scheme is in design and is subject to planning approval and the tendering process.
The remaining beds will be delivered at new 24-bed wards at the CUH Group’s Mallow and Bantry hospitals.
Separately, enabling works on CUH’s new surgical hub are complete, with hopes that contractors could be appointed in a few months, and the building complete by the end of 2025.
CUH CEO David Donegan welcomed the Government’s bed expansion plan.
“This is a major milestone for the CUH Group, reflecting full governmental support for the strategic capital plan we’ve developed over the last two years,” he said.
“This investment will benefit everyone in the southern third of Ireland who rely on CUH.”
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly described the national package as a “game-changer” and called it “the largest planned expansion of public hospital beds in many decades”.
Construction of a ground-based helipad at CUH is well advanced. It is due to become operational this summer.
A spokesman for the hospital said once the TACC tower is fully complete with a roof-based helipad, which could be eight to 10 years away, a decision will be made at that stage on the future of the ground-based helipad.
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