Ms Eilísh Hardiman:

Thank you. Good morning Chairman and committee members. I am chief executive of the Children's Hospital Group. I thank the committee for the invitation here this morning to represent the group for the first stage of the legislative process on the Children’s Health Bill 2017. I would like to introduce my colleague, Ms Valerie Plant, chief financial officer at the Children’s Hospital Group, and I would like to acknowledge the presence of representatives of the four boards involved in developing this general scheme. We are joined by Dr. Jim Browne, who is the chair of the Children’s Hospital Group Board; Mr. Turlough O’Sullivan, vice chair of Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin; Mr. Derek McGrath, board member of Temple Street Children’s University Hospital; and Ms Catherine Guy, board member of the Children’s Hospital Group Board.

Mr. Liam Dowdall, chair of Tallaght Hospital, unfortunately, had to send his apologies. The presence of these representatives demonstrates that the commitment of these four boards to the vision for children’s health is truly commendable. It clearly demonstrates the agreement of the four boards to voluntarily transition to a new stand alone children’s hospital and to a single legal structure to govern and manage paediatric services in Dublin, as the central hub of a clinical network for paediatric services in Ireland. The Children’s Hospital Group is working with colleagues in the three children’s hospitals, the HSE and the Department of Health to achieve an ambitious transformation programme for acute paediatric services - one that will be equipped to serve the needs of children and young people in Ireland today and for generations to come.

Central to this work is the implementation of a new national model of care for paediatric health services in Ireland. This will have at its centre a new children’s hospital in Dublin providing tertiary and quaternary care and two paediatric outpatient and urgent care centreslocated on the campuses of Tallaght and Connolly Hospitals. The new children’s hospital, currently under construction, will bring the three children’s hospitals together under one roof and, before this, into a single legal entity. The network approach being planned will deliver care seamlessly across a network of services, working closely with our colleagues in the other hospital groups and community health care organisations, as envisaged in the Sláintecare report.

Paediatric services in Dublin are currently provided by three separate voluntary hospitals, namely, Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin, Temple Street Children’s University Hospital and the National Children’s Hospital at Tallaght Hospital.

In parallel with the physical building of the new children’s hospital and twopaediatric outpatient and urgent care centres, an ambitious integration programme is under way to ensure that all staff and all clinical services are successfully brought together, operating as one ahead of the physical move into the new buildings. Our integration programme is focused on our people, on valuing and aligning our different cultures, integrating our IT systems and standardising clinical and operational protocols, staff recruitment and training. It touches all parts of the operations of the hospitals and all parts of service delivery. It has at its centre the health, safety and well-being of children and young people and valuing our staff. The programme of integration is been undertaken at a time when we continue to deliver care and services in three very busy acute hospitals. This programme for change takes years to implement and, therefore, will be enabled greatly by the early enactment of the children’s health Bill 2017.

The three children’s hospitals have long established histories, with between 60 and 196 years of delivery of services to children, young people and their families. The success of our integration will require a continued commitment to planning and implementation to ensure that the reconfiguration of services is undertaken in the right way, within the right timeframe and in the interests of the patients that we serve. To support this integration work from a legal and governance perspective, the three children's hospitals and their boards have voluntarily agreed to come together as part of a new single entity. This new single entity on commencement will take over the governance and management of services currently provided by these three hospitals, and the rights and liabilities of the three hospitals will transfer into it.

The Children’s Hospital Group Board has a new vastly experienced board. Included in the papers submitted to the committee is the actual board membership and the members' competencies. That needs to be put on a statutory footing as soon as possible to enable and facilitate the scale of work that will be required and to allow clear governance of the new services planned to open in 2019 at Connolly Hospital. It is critically important that Ireland’s new paediatric services are being delivered under the right governance structures, built on the vast experience of the existing boards in their governance of services. It is imperative that the planning of integration work is undertaken by the appropriate legal structure. This will give impetus to our work, provide protection and assurance to our staff and patients and will act as a catalyst for progress to our continued programme of integration . Importantly, it also provides assurances for staff that their terms and conditions will remain the same as they transfer. We are satisfied that the model proposed in the general scheme provides the best support for a new legal entity in light of the significant change management process that we are undertaking.

As members will know, we announced the new name for children’s health services on Monday last, Phoenix Children’s Health. It is a particularly fitting name given what the mythical figure of the phoenix represents opportunity, transformation, and regeneration. We are entering into an extraordinary period of change in children’s health care. I know that the committee will agree with me that it is long overdue. The legislation will play a critical role in supporting us in the three hospitals and the Children's Hospital Group in providing the single entity required to support our staff delivering paediatric services as we work to deliver the vision for children’s health care. I thank the committee and I am happy to take any questions from committee members.