Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has announced her intention to build a new hospital to help address the deficiencies in the health service in the Midwest.
In addition, she told RTÉ Radio’s News at One, there will be an expansion of acute bed capacity at University Hospital Limerick‘s Dooradoyle site and the development of a second site nearby to increase capacity.
In mid-2024, then minister for health Stephen Donnelly asked the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) to review the delivery of urgent and emergency healthcare services in HSE Mid West, which covers Limerick, Clare and North Tipperary.
The request, which was made on foot of patient safety concerns, also considered the need for a second emergency department (ED) in the region.
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Hiqa put forward three possible options.
The first option was to expand capacity at UHL’s Dooradoyle site. The second was the extension of the UHL campus to include a second site nearby and the third option was the development of a new hospital in HSE Mid West, providing a second ED.
The Minister said on Tuesday she has decided to proceed with all three options.
“I have Government permission to accept all three options, option A, option B, and option C, and to take appropriate steps to deliver all of them as quickly as may be,” she said.
“Option A is an immediate development of acute bed capacity on the Dooradoyle site. We have secured planning permission for a second 96 bed block which is going out to tender now very, very shortly to deliver that as quickly as possible.
“There’ll be an additional 66 beds and another 16 elsewhere. We have opened 128 beds in the very recent past on that site already.
“Option B which Hiqa outlined is to secure another site adjacent to the hospital to provide additional capacity and option C is to a secure a site which would deliver essentially another hospital for the midwest region.”
Ms Carroll MacNeill said there was no question that the Midwest needed another hospital because of the growing population.
“It is my intention to progress all three options together and immediately with option A and option B and to discuss how best to progress option C, recognising that is much more of a medium-term solution.
“I am fully aware of the pain and the concern that people of the Midwest have had in relation to the available healthcare services to them,” the Minister said.
“I want to assure them that as we look at, as we progress all three options, our absolute priority will be continuing to deliver inpatient acute beds on Dooradoyle site because we can see what a difference that is making.”
“There has been a huge impact from the 96 beds that we opened in October with essentially a halving of the number of people on trolleys in the six weeks before and six weeks after that,” she said. “So we know that works and we know that’s what people need in the immediate term.”
