Master says Coombe relocation should go ahead

The relocation of the Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital to a greenfield site in Tallaght should proceed despite the recession, the master of its hospital has said.

Dr Chris Fitzpatrick said a new hospital could be build on the existing Tallaght Hospital site within five years which would be better able to cope with its catchment area in south-west Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow.

A proposal to co-locate the hospital in Tallaght has already been submitted to the HSE and the Department of Health and Children and the Coombe board of management is hoping that the soon-to-be-published KPMG review of maternity and gynaecology services in the greater Dublin area will endorse its proposal.

Figures released today show the hospital had a record number of births last year. In total, 8,497 children were born there in 2007, an increase of 5 per cent on the 2006 total of 8,084 births, itself a record.

Dr Fitzpatrick said the cost of a new hospital facility could be offset by the €46 million which will have to be found to upgrade the existing Coombe site and also by the sale of that site which is about five acres off the South Circular Road in Dublin.

He said the value of that site had declined because of the recession, but he envisaged that it would become valuable again by the time the Coombe had moved to Tallaght.

He declined to say what the costs involved would be, but a previous proposal to move to the St James’s Hospital site nearby was costed at €160 million and the value of the Coombe site was put at €60 million.

Launching the hospital’s annual report, Dr Fitzpatrick said they could make a “cogent value-for-money argument” for co-location. “One of the things we have noted as a stand-alone women and infants hospital, we do not have the immediacy of access to the full range of specialist services we require. There is a requirement for us to have access to the full range of diagnostic and specialist services that exist on adult teaching services.

“In terms of academic synergies, we think co-locating on to an academic medical centre would be the way forward,” he said.

Figures produced by the hospital showed the perinatal (between 22 weeks gestation and seven days after birth) mortality rate was 4.6 per 1,000, the lowest ever recorded at the hospital.

A total of 22 per cent of births were by Caesarean section and the number of mothers under 20 has declined from 6.1 per cent of births in 2002 to 3.9 per cent last year.