Construction work has resumed on a €70 million private medical clinic in Galway city following six months of inactivity.
The facility, the first in the State to benefit from changes to the Government's Finance Bill in 2001, is now expected to open in June of next year.
Blackrock Medical Partners, the developers of the 100-bed hospital, decided to slow down work on the site in order to give them time to re-examine their options for the long-term financing of the project.
"We have been waiting for work to start again since January, and funding has been in place for a long time," said Dr James Sheehan of Blackrock Medical Partners, who operate the Blackrock Clinic in Dublin.
It is envisaged that 20 per cent of the beds will be made available for public patients, and the Galway clinic will have direct electronic links with the Mayo Clinic in the US, so that X-rays and angiograms can be analysed by US experts.