Super hospital at Naas Road site

Plans for a major "tri-location, super hospital complex" incorporating a 450-bed children's hospital have been drawn up for a site at Corkagh, near the Naas Road in south Dublin.

The scale of the development is massive with the 450-bed children's unit alone outstripping Government plans to locate a new national children's hospital with 380 beds, at the Mater Hospital in Dublin.

The planning application for a hospital complex of 219,000sq m (2.357 million sq ft), including the 12-storey children's hospital with a floor area of 135,000sq m (1.453 million sq ft), was published in yesterday's newspapers by private company Abbeyrock Technologies Ltd. Abbeyrock is controlled by Richard Farrington who has extensive building interests in Limerick and Dublin.

The proposal also includes a nine-storey, 220-bed maternity hospital alongside a similar nine-storey adult hospital. The site would also house a nine-storey, 330-bed workers accommodation block and private ancillary retail outlets on site. The super hospital complex is also to have its own diagnostic imaging technology and facilities for clinical waste handling.

The construction works would involve the demolition of low rise horticultural warehousing currently on site, the building of new access routes and 2,500 basement car-parking spaces, as well as two rooftop helipads. Attempts to contact Mr Farrington at the time of writing were not successful, but the planning application is likely to provide a further twist to Health Service Executive plans to locate the new national children's hospital on the Mater Hospital complex site in Dublin.

The Naas Road site is located close to the M50, which gives access to regional traffic, meaning that parents would not have to deal with Dublin city centre traffic when they bring sick children to hospital. Two of the three children's hospitals in Dublin are currently in talks to build a state-of-the-art national children's hospital in Tallaght as an alternative to moving to the Government's planned site at the Mater Hospital.

Tallaght Hospital and Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin are understood to have been in talks for several months about building the new facility at a site adjoining the hospital in Tallaght. .

Property developer Noel Smyth has also offered the Government a site - coincidentally close to the Naas Road - but it is believed to be a separate site to the Abbeyrock Technologies plan.

Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin has warned that it will not relocate to the Mater Hospital site. Tallaght Hospital is expected to follow suit.

The hospitals' objections relate largely to the national children's hospital's size and city centre location.