The Minister for Health said she could not immediately give timelines or costings on her plans to develop a newly purchased greenfield site that will be used for the development of a second hospital campus in Limerick for the midwest region.
The 44-acre site at Raheen, Co Limerick, which cost the €14 million, will be one of the biggest hospital campuses nationally, Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill told reporters in Limerick on Tuesday.
MacNeill said it was too early to say how many additional beds and jobs would be created on the Raheen site, and whether it would include a 24-hour emergency department.
The Minister said “all of that” will be decided by a “development control panel board” of local and national HSE management and clinicians, which she is to establish and have report back to her “later in 2026”.
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“It would be wrong of me to tell you that we have the plan in perpetuity for all that. We have the site and now we need to develop it,” MacNeill said.
“What we need to be thinking about now is not the next three months, but the next 30 years and how we are gong to meet the [health] needs of the region in that,” she added.
The Raheen site was purchased with the intent of alleviating capacity pressure on University Hospital Limerick at Dooradoyle, which includes the only 24-hour emergency department (ED) for all of Limerick city and county, Clare, north Tipperary, north Cork and north Kerry.
The Dooradoyle site is persistently the most overcrowded hospital nationally, and there have been repeated calls within the region for additional ED services.
MacNeill said she could not confirm that a second ED would be included on the Raheen site, but she did not rule it out.
The Raheen site is located 2km from the Dooradoyle model-four hospital, and a half-hour drive from the model-two hospitals in Nenagh, north Tipperary, and Ennis, Co Clare.
The Minister said while the Raheen site was a longer-term health plan for the region, her immediate priorities included ending the practice of cancer patients living outside Limerick having to travel to UHL for routine “cancer infusion” treatment. “They should be able to get that closer to home,” she said.
MacNeill said the provision of additional and replacement hospital beds across the region was under way, including 48 new beds and the redevelopment of equipment sterilisation and radiology services at Ennis Hospital; 48 additional and replacement beds at Nenagh hospital; and a second 96-bed block at UHL.
The development of the Raheen site was in addition to this and offered, said MacNeill, a “clear opportunity to have two acute hospital campuses in Limerick”.
MacNeill said she was committed to further government “investment in Ennis and Nenagh”.
Mayor of Limerick John Moran said he has been in talks with the HSE to provide modular homes, as well as about 70 acres on a proposed rail link that he believes could be used by staff at the proposed hospital campus at Raheen.
“It’s located right between lands that Limerick city and county council is purchasing in Patrickswell – 70 acres for housing which we got for €4 million,” Moran said.
The lands acquired by the council “are basically located either side of this [Raheen site],” Moran said.
“With the smart homes that we have also offered to the HSE, if it takes them 15-20 years to use up some of their site, we can put smart homes on it, and actually have housing right on the site. We are all working together in the background to make this all happen,” added Moran.
