Ms Eilísh Hardiman:

I thank the Chairman, Deputies and Senators for inviting us to present to the committee this morning. The Children’s Hospital Group consists of the three children’s hospitals at Crumlin, Temple Street and Tallaght, and we have been working for the past three years with the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board to develop a hospital that will meet the requirements of our sick children and the children whom we serve locally. It is a project that the staff in the three children's hospitals fully support. It is a badly-needed project that must be delivered in a timely manner.

As Mr. Pollock mentioned, the hospital is just one part of our plan for paediatric services in Ireland. This plan is called the new model of care for paediatrics, which has been developed over four years of extensive engagement with parent representative groups, general practitioners, doctors, nurses and health and social care professionals in every paediatric service unit on the island of Ireland. It is led by Professor Alf Nicholson and Professor John Murphy. It has concluded, but it has been working for the past four years and central to that work was the development of the new children's hospital.

The new children’s hospital at St. James’s Hospital and the paediatric outpatient department and urgent care centres at Tallaght and Connolly hospitals will provide services to children and young people to ensure that the right care is given by the right team at the right time. It is important for us to be clear about the primary functions of these new facilities. First, the vast majority of work we undertake, which is 78% of the inpatients currently in the three children's hospitals, comes from the greater Dublin area, that is, Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow and part of Meath. The future plan is to undertake those services through the hospital and the two satellite centres at Connolly and Tallaght hospitals.

Our second objective has the national remit, which is the highly specialist tertiary-quaternary care, for children across all of the island. Currently, that comprises 22% of the workload undertaken by the three children's hospitals. I fully support the previous group in its strong support for tri-location. We in the Children's Hospital Group and the three children’s hospitals fully believe that tri-location on this campus with St. James’s Hospital and the relocated Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital is the optimal configuration of services from a clinical perspective.

In terms of the three children's hospitals, the clinical directors, the medical boards and the nursing leaders believe it is best for us to co-locate with St. James's Hospital, which is the largest hospital and the leading adult teaching hospital, because it offers unparalleled opportunities for our paediatric services to be supported by the breadth and depth of sub-specialties that best support paediatrics. Also, as a campus, it fits in with our vision for research and innovation. Between its facilities already on the St. James's campus and the new children's research and innovation centre, it will drive advancements and treatments that will improve clinical outcomes for our children.

What we are about, however, is more than the building, albeit it is an important catalyst. I am glad to report that the Children’s Hospital Group and the three children's hospitals are working hard to integrate to ensure we become one before we move into these new facilities. We have a major programme ahead of us, which includes establishing a new single legal entity to run the services on the three children's hospitals and manage them, and the transition to the new facilities.

In discussing everything we are doing, we must stay focused on the importance of this new hospital in addressing some of our concerns. Currently, children, young people and their families are receiving treatment in buildings that are no longer fit for purpose. We have heroic, talented staff that we value highly. Despite their surroundings, they are doing great work but in sub-optimal conditions.

We support our colleagues, who have presented previously to the committee, in the absolute need for a new children's hospital. It is, however, broader than that. We also rely on multiple arrangements with several adult hospitals to support paediatrics and we need to move to position where that is much more co-ordinated with a large teaching hospital. The ability to work collaboratively across all of the clinical specialties in paediatrics is hampered and limited by the fact that the specialties are on different sites particularly between Our Lady's hospital in Crumlin and Temple Street Children's University Hospital. This means that our children and their families need to move across the city, our charts need to move across the city, our x-rays need to move across the city and it is not helping us in delivering optimal care. Tonight, parents will be sleeping on the floor of a children's hospital beside their sick child's bed because we do not have the facilities to accommodate them appropriately. There is limited car parking at Our Lady's hospital in Crumlin and there is none at Temple Street. Our children deserve more.

In making progress, we have identified that there are 39 specialties within our existing services. These specialties have mapped out, over the last year, what they are going to do and undertake before they move to this new hospital. This is essential because while the building offers the opportunity to come together, fundamentally as a service we need to be working effectively before we transition to these new centres. There is extensive, daily collaboration between the three children's hospitals; between the nurse, the clinical and the management leaders, on optimally getting the best from a clinical and operational perspective in designing this hospital. We are on track for our programme and we will work with our colleagues in the development board to support this build. We are already making changes in how we are delivering paediatric services such as introducing new beds and new types of beds into children's hospitals. The new building will be a significant catalyst for positive change and it will afford us the vision that we want to deliver, as do all of us here, with what is right and best for our children.