Construction work is due to start soon on the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin after the Taoiseach announced a £6 million investment yesterday. The capital programme was welcomed as "a much-needed and long overdue improvement of existing facilities" by the Master of the Rotunda, Dr Peter McKenna.
The money will go towards the amalgamation of the Paediatric Unit and the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit into one centralised unit, providing 36 cots. The fabric of the hospital's buildings is beginning to show its 250 years, Dr McKenna said.
The Rotunda raised £2 million, while the remaining £4.2 million will come from the Eastern Regional Health Authority's allocation.
"Dublin maternity hospitals have not had much in the way of capital investment in the past 10 years or so", Dr McKenna said. "This building could soak up much more capital. In the next five years we would like to house all of our patients in modern buildings."
The £4.2 million to be provided by the ERHA was not much greater than the £4 million the hospital was paying out this year towards damage liability insurance, Dr McKenna pointed out.
In his speech announcing the capital injection the Taoiseach recognised that the investment was badly needed. And his description of the Rotunda as "a national institution" was returned in kind by Dr McKenna, who presented Mr Ahern with a birthday cake to mark "a monumental landmark in Irish history", his birth in the hospital on September 12th, 1951.