Madam, - Given the intensifying debate about the, er, interesting decision to locate the new national children's hospital on the Mater hospital campus in north Dublin, perhaps now is the time to consider the "speed of access" to the proposed hospital, not just for Dubliners but for those outside the Pale.
At the moment, a small fleet of ambulances leaves Cork and Kerry each week with precious human cargo bound for "specialist" units such as Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin or the spinal injuries unit at the Mater hospital.
At the same time, ambulances are leaving in numbers from other corners of the country. Many of the journeys made in these vehicles are fraught with delay due to road congestion, while the capacity to treat patients en route is extremely restricted.
Add in the prolonged discomfort of everyone in the back of these bouncing vans and the depletion of essential ambulance crew and vehicles from their bases and you begin to realise that just getting to Dublin - never mind through its traffic jams - is a major challenge for the health service, and the people it serves.
Happily, there is a solution. At a recent course on major incident management in Haulbowline, a nursing colleague suggested that the train disaster at Buttevant in 1980 might have been better managed if another train had reversed up the track from Kent Station in Cork to transport the 80 victims to hospitals in the city.
It occurred to me that such a mode of patient transport could actually be used daily from the south-west, or indeed anywhere with a rail terminal. Thus, a specially designed "mobile intensive care" wagon could be attached as needed to trains leaving Cork (or elsewhere) every hour or so and, in a jiffy, the comfort and care of patients, and their attendants, could be greatly enhanced.
Moreover, transport time to Dublin (if not to its northside) would be predictable and the depletion of scarce resources outside the capital would be minimised. Naturally, the same advantages would accrue with grown-up patients.
I wonder if such a madcap idea could be included in a "grown-up" debate about where exactly in Dublin one puts various healthcare facilities, of any sort? - Yours, etc,
Dr CHRIS LUKE, Cork University Hospital, Cork.