THE GOVERNMENT has approved the site of Dublin’s Mater hospital as the location of the new national children’s hospital but a go-ahead for the project is dependent on the availability of sufficient capital funding.
The Cabinet yesterday accepted the finding of an independent review group that the Mater site was the correct one for the project and gave the go-ahead for the lodgement of a planning application.
However, a decision on whether to build the hospital will not be made until September when the Government review of all capital spending projects is completed.
Minister for Health James Reilly intends to outline his plans for the site at a press conference today. He will also publish the report of the review team, which included the chief executives of four children’s hospitals in Boston, Colorado, Queensland and London.
Although the report recommends some changes to the building these are relatively minor and will not affect the overall scale of the project, according to an informed source. In particular, he said the height of the new hospital was not being reduced, as had been reported.
The alterations will necessitate changes to the design and may delay the submission of a planning application.
Dr Reilly commissioned the review because question marks were raised over whether the hospital – into which Dublin’s three children’s hospitals at Crumlin, Temple Street and Tallaght will be merged – could be built for less at a different location.
Almost €30 million has been spent on the project but the final cost is expected to reach €650 million under current projections.
Opponents of the Mater site have criticised the review team for not looking at alternative sites but a Government spokesman said yesterday this was not accurate.
A spokesman for Mr Reilly confirmed the review group did look at other possible sites for the hospital, including an undeveloped greenfield one previously offered by property developer Noel Smyth at Newlands Cross and close to the M50. It also looked at a brownfield site not in use in private ownership adjacent to Tallaght hospital and a greenfield site in public ownership beside Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown.
Architects from the review group looked at the cost differential between building the hospital on these sites as opposed to at the Mater, and then took a view on whether the benefits of building the hospital at the Mater, co-located with an adult teaching hospital, outweighed the benefits of any cost savings involved in building at an alternative location.
Although former HSE chief executive Brendan Drumm stressed yesterday that the capital funding for the project had already been allocated, the Government spokesman said this had happened under a previous administration.
A Department of Health spokesman confirmed the review cost upwards of €70,000 in architectural fees. The chief executives of the children’s hospitals worked for free.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the New Children’s Hospital Alliance, which has been campaigning against the Mater site, said he would prefer not to comment on the decision by the review group to opt for the Mater site until he had seen the report. “I want to see the logic behind their decision.”
If the review group recognised there were problems with the Mater site and suggested ways of fixing them then he would be happy, he said, but if they found the Mater site to be a perfect location then he would have difficulties with that.