Hospital transport - Bizarre plan is utterly unacceptable

RUSHING a sick child to hospital is distressing at the best of times but it defies credulity that parents should be expected to undertake this daunting journey by train.

Astonishingly, that bizarre scenario is part of the controversial proposal to base the new national children’s hospital at Dublin’s Mater Hospital.

Traffic congestion in the city is now so bad, parents are being told they will be able to bring a sick child right to the hospital door on the Luas.

For those living in the capital that would be problematic. But for anyone travelling from outside Dublin the difficulties would be unimaginable.

Further compounding the problem, the construction of new buildings at the Mater site, where space is already cramped, would make parking for staff and visitors virtually impossible.

Medical politics aside, it is understandable that both Crumlin and Tallaght hospitals have withdrawn support from the plan to concentrate facilities at the Mater. As the country’s biggest children’s hospital, management at Our Lady’s in Crumlin does not believe the Mater site can deliver the world-class facility promised.

Meanwhile, the chief executive of the Health Service Executive (HSE) Professor Brendan Drumm is desperately defending the proposal. But despite his emphatic denials that politics had anything to do with the decision, these suspicions will not go away, especially since the Mater is in Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s political backyard and a general election is looming.

Combining a central hospital for children with allied medical facilities makes sense. But asking parents to bring sick children to hospital by train is ludicrous.

Would any Cabinet minister or, for that matter, any HSE manager consider taking their child to hospital on the Luas?

That scenario is unacceptable and should not be visited on sick children or their parents.