Important milestone as €650m world-class children’s hospital plans lodged
By Mary Dennehy
ACCESSIBILITY and patient parking is now key for the success of the new children’s hospital at St James’s, a senior pediatrician at Tallaght Hospital told The Echo this week.
On Monday, plans for the country’s new, world-class children’s hospital were lodged with An Bord Pleanala – alongside planning permission for two new pediatric outpatient depertments and urgent care satellite centres at Tallaght and Connolly.
Following 12 months of intensive work, including more than 1,000 hours of engagement and consultation with staff from the three exisiting children’s hospital, families, chilldren, patients and residents, a planning application was lodged for the €650 million facility – which will have 380 in patient bed and 93 day care.
Speaking to The Echo, Eilish Hardiman, Chief Executive of the Children’s Hospital Group, said: “This is an important milestone and when planning is passed within the next six months, we should be moving onto enabling by February.
“The hospital and two satellite centres are located where we have the largest child population needs in Dublin, 45 per cent of child population in Dublin is within the catchment of St James’s while around 22 per cent is within Tallaght Hospital’s and another 22 per cent within Connolly.
“Social deprivation also results in a higher dependancy on healthcare compared to more affluent areas.”
Ms Hardiman explained how the new children’s hospital and satellite centres will deal with around 73 per cent local needs while the remaining 22 to 25 per cent will be highly specialised services for the whole of Ireland, with these 39 specialities for sick kids being based at St James’s.
It’s four years since the planning application for the children’s hospital at the Mater was refused permission.
When asked what’s different this time round, Ms Hardiman said: “The reason for the decision last time was the height of the building.
“The site at St James’s is three times the size of the previous site and is complying with the Local Area Plan.
“We also split the board into two teams, development and services, funding of €650 million has been identified and the project has the backing of all of the staff of three existing children’s hospitals.”
The satellite centres at Tallaght and Blanchardstown, which are being built in tandem with the new children’s hospital, are part of a new paediatric model of care which will see the two centres providing urgent care and out-patients clinics – treating children who do not need to be admitted in an effective and speedy manner.
Peter Greally, clinical director for paediatric services at Tallaght, and the newly appointed group cloinical director for the Children’s Hospital Group, said: “With the three children’s hospitals we have been triplicating everything, with some sick kids finding themselves attending all three hospitals for services and maybe even the eye and ear.
“Criticall ill kids who need intensive care will be looked after at St James’s but in the majority of cases with childhood illnesses or injuries, young patients do not need to be admitted and can be treated and monitored in a short stay observation unit for maybe four to six hours – relieving stress on the family and avoiding unneccesary admission.”
“The staff at the satellite clinic in Tallaght will be trained to stabilise and provide advanced life support to any child who presents at Tallaght with a serious illness before they can be transferred to St James’s.
“Over coming months communication will be vital in raising awareness around the satellite clinics and when a parent should bring a child to Tallaght and when to St James’s.
“However staff at Tallaght will be trained for all patient arrivals.”
He added: “The satellite centre will enhance children’s services at Tallaght, in no way is this a downgrade, and there will be additional services coming on site.
“Tallaght Hospital did submit a good bid for the children’s hospital and it scored quite well in terms of location and access.
“However, it didn’t have the strengths in terms of the adult side of the hospital.”
When asked about accessibility concerns for St James’s, Mr Greally said: “A lot of work does have to be done concerning accessibility.
“St James’s has good public networks but there are a lot of Victorian streets surroounding St James’s which won’t allow for on-street parking.
“The key thing here is patients, patients and their families need to be able to access the site easily and once they have arrived on site, they need to be able to set down and park.”
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