Reilly insists St James’s best site for €650m children’s hospital

St James's Hospital in Dublin is the best site for the new national children's hospital "by a country mile", according to Minister for Health James Reilly.

Dr Reilly rejected calls by the Jack & Jill Foundation for the project to be moved to another location and emphasized that “the national children’s hospital is staying at St James’s”.

The foundation, which provides support for parents of extremely sick children, has opened a petition calling for the €650 million project to be moved from St James’s Hospital. It says sick children need co-location with a maternity hospital over an adult one.

Dr Reilly said the crucial “driver” in favour of St James’s was the large number of specialties and facilities available on its campus. Because of Ireland’s small population, many rare medical conditions were being dealt with by specialists who wouldn’t be available if they weren’t also treating adults.

The Minister said he had great respect for the work done by Jack & Jill but “other experts with more expertise” had ruled on the issue.

The Department of Health announced last week that the project brief for the hospital had been approved and a design team is to be appointed shortly.

Critics of the St James’s site claim it is too small with poor traffic links apart from Luas. The team behind the project have pointed out that twice as much land is available as was envisaged for use at the Mater, where the project was originally proposed until a planning applications was rejected by An Bord Pleanala.