Niamh Griffin: New children's hospital's basic benefits should have been here well before now

Some parents who advocated the loudest for the new hospital will not see the benefits; because their children are grown now, or passed away, writes Niamh Griffin

A drone image of the new children's hospital. The new hospital will provide many improvements for patients and their families, but a lot of those benefits should have been in place already.

While the new children’s hospital will bring many changes, some are so basic that one has to wonder why families were left to struggle for so long without them.

On a rainy day last week, construction and medical experts stood on what will be a roof garden for the seven-storey structure. They talked about filtered air systems, hybrid operating theatres and high-spec critical care units.

That is all hugely welcome. But a video on the hospital website of a Cork family talking about their challenges shows another side to this tale.

The new hospital will gather 39 medical specialities from three sites together; Tallaght, Temple Street, and Crumlin hospitals. The latter two are in the city centre.

Sinead, the mother of a young boy with Pfeiffer’s Syndrome, talks in the video about medical treatment at Temple Street. Her main focus however is more prosaic.

On parking: “It would be so good to have that taken off you and let you concentrate on your child.” 

On Sleeping: “It’s an extra headache when you’re going for quite a serious operation with Finn, to have to worry about where you are going to sleep that night.”

So when you see en-suite rooms designed to hold a sofa-bed for mum or dad or even both, that’s a win.

When you see a 675-space underground parking with a booking system so parents can drive from Kerry without fear of being late because they couldn’t find a spot, and a plan for staff to park cars for parents rushing into the Emergency Department, that’s a win.

When you see windows about two metres wide so children spending weeks in hospitals can see four acres of garden, that’s a win.

Clearly having these things without the appropriate medical technology or highly-trained well-paid staff would not be a win.

But to have everything possibly coming together on one site is, whisper it, good for families.

Or at least, it will be. There is a long way to go yet. And likely more millions to add to the estimated construction cost of €1.7bn.

There is talk of 2024 for fitting out the shell with equipment; the walls now are plain concrete, workers travel between the floors on aluminium steps.

Electronic health records for the first time need to materialise from thousands of charts and different IT systems. The helicopter pad is half-built.

But the real shame is so many families missed out on this.

Some parents who advocated the loudest for the new hospital will not see the benefits; because their children are grown now, or passed away.

And that is no hyperbole.

The first proposal for a children’s hospital co-located with an adult site was in 1993. The National Paediatric Hospital Development Board was set up in 2007.

The intervening years were marked by changes in planning decisions, a location change, board resignations and left many families feeling their voice was not heard in the decision-making.

Some people in the local area still feel they are not being heard. There are concerns too about where thousands of medical and support staff will park.

You just hope someone somewhere in some important office is taking notes of all the many things which went wrong with these plans and making sure they do not happen again.