PLANNING PERMISSION will be sought for the construction of the new national children’s hospital on the site of Dublin’s Mater hospital in the next fortnight.
Minister for Health James Reilly has given the go-ahead for the planning application to be submitted to An Bord Pleanála, even though the Government will not make a final decision on proceeding with the €650 million hospital project until an overall review of capital spending projects across the State is completed in September.
If funding is provided and planning is granted, it is now expected the hospital could be open by late 2016, a year later than originally anticipated.
Dr Reilly said there has been “a long and tortuous debate” over where the hospital should be located but following a review by a team of architects and clinicians “who had no axe to grind” he was happy to endorse the Mater site as the location for the new children’s hospital – into which Crumlin, Temple Street and Tallaght children’s hospitals will be merged.
He was speaking at the publication of two reports outlining the findings of the review group, who agreed the hospital should proceed at the Mater site.
A financial analysis carried out by architects concluded the cost of developing the new children’s hospital on the Mater campus was similar to the costs which would be incurred if it were developed on a greenfield site at Newlands Cross, a brownfield site adjacent to Tallaght hospital or a greenfield site adjacent to Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown.
While they established that the cost of building the hospital on one of these three alternative sites would at first glance be between €26.1 million and €51.7 million cheaper, this was without factoring in the non-recoverable costs already spent on designing the hospital for the Mater campus (some €24 million) or land costs. The sites at Newlands Cross and Tallaght are in private ownership.
Their report said if a new site was to be chosen, the hospital would not be completed until 2019, some 2½ years later than at the Mater campus. They estimated having the three existing children’s hospitals on one site would save €23 million a year and if this money was lost over the period of this delay, there was no real difference in the cost of constructing the hospital at the Mater as opposed to the other sites.
“A change of site will not significantly reduce the development costs of the national paediatric hospital. If the non-recoverable costs and the lost opportunity of revenue savings are taken into account there is very little difference between the costs of developing Eccles Street and the comparator sites and therefore no reason to incur the risk of delaying the project for 2½ years,” the report says.
The CEOs of four children’s hospitals in Boston, Colorado, Queensland and London also participated in the review and in their separate report they “unanimously and unequivocally” recommended the immediate implementation of plans to merge the three existing Dublin children’s hospitals on the Mater site. They also agreed with plans to build an urgent care centre in Tallaght.
“We feel strongly that any further delay or change in plans will impair the ability to deliver the safe and high-quality care for the children of Ireland that is long overdue,” their report said.
However they concluded there was “an urgent need to review certain aspects” of the current programme including clinician engagement, communication with the public and others on issues around access. They acknowledged this was a concern but said “comprehensive travel studies” had been carried out which appeared to be thorough, well tested and statistically reliable. “Access is less of an issue for parents than appropriate and high quality care,” they said.
They also recommended “a focused review of some elements of the planned facility” including the emergency department design but did not recommend any change to the hospital’s height.
In addition they said a number of other areas required a fresh approach. These were in the governance of the hospital project and management of the foundation capital campaign.
Dr Reilly said he would make an announcement next week about the future of the national paediatric hospital development board which has lost two chairmen since last October and is shortly to lose its chief executive. It was set up to oversee the construction of the new hospital.
Hospital project: Who conducted the review?
THE REVIEW is published in two parts. The first, a financial analysis of the costs of the hospital if built on different sites, was undertaken under the auspices of the European Health Property Network.
The panel was chaired by Jonathan Erskine, executive director of the network, and led by John Cooper, a UK healthcare architect.
A clinical review of the decision was also conducted. It was carried out by Dr James Mandell, a paediatric urologist and CEO of the Children's Hospital, Boston; Dr James Shmerling, president and chief executive of the Children's Hospital of Colorado; Prof Peter Steer, a paediatrician and neonatologist, and CEO of Children's Health Services, Queensland, Australia; and Dr Jane Collins, a paediatric neurologist and CEO of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, London.