Children’s emergency centres to open at Tallaght, Blanchardstown

Two emergency/ urgent care centres for children are to be developed at Tallaght and Connolly hospitals in Dublin at a combined cost of around €50 million.

The Minister for Health James Reilly said the new facilities would act as satellite centres of the planned new national children's hospital.

It said both centres were scheduled to be completed by mid 2016, in advance of the planned opening of the new hospital which will be located on the campus of St James’s Hospital.

The Minister said the design of the national children’s hospital would go out to tender shortly. He said it was planned that planning permission would be sought around September and it was hoped this would be secured by spring next year and that construction could commenced shortly afterwards. He said the aim was to commence the transition of services to the new hospital at the end of 2018.

Dr Reilly said the satellite centres would be an integral part of the new children’s hospital. He said they would have the same governance, the same management and the same clinical standards. He said staff would rotate between the satellite centres and the new hospital.

The Minister said the new satellite centres would not carry out day surgery as was originally envisaged in earlier plans.

He said it had been decided that surgeons should prioritise their support for hospitals around the country “to assist them in doing as much paediatric surgery locally as possibly”.

“I makes sense to do surgery in just one Dublin location, the main national children’s hospital, so that all children can be treated as close to home as possible.”

The Department of Health said the new centres were being developed to enhance access to emergency/urgent care facilities for children in the greater Dublin area.

It said that as well as urgent care, the new centres would also provide acute out-patient services, including rapid access general paediatric clinics.

The Minister said the satellite centres were necessary as it was projected by 2021 there would be approximately 122,000 emergency/urgent care attendances by children in the greater Dublin area and that this was considered too large for a single emergency department to deal with.

The Department of Health said that the satellite centres were projected to provide 41 per cent of urgent/emergency care in the greater Dublin area, the equivalent of around 50,000 attendances annually.

He said the announcement of the new urgent care centres marked “another key milestone in the development of the national children’s hospital”.

The Department of Health said each of the new centres would provide consultant-delivered urgent care and would have around six beds where staff could observe children for up to six hours. The new centres would also have “appropriate diagnostics” such as X ray and laboratory equipment.

The Department of Health said it was anticipated the satellite centres would be open from 7.30am to 10.00 pm.

It said it was envisaged that the majority of patients attending the centres would be treated and discharged.

The Department of Health said that Tallaght and Connolly hospitals had been chosen as locations for the new facilities as they had advantages over other options considered on the basis of paediatric population data, access, site suitability and timescale for development.