Ms Eilísh Hardiman:

I thank the Deputy for her questions. It is important to speak to the broader health system. From the get-go, the planning for this hospital has been a whole-of-Ireland approach. There is a national model of care for paediatrics that underpins the policy position as to why we need to consolidate the high-end tertiary, quaternary requirements into one hospital and for it to be based in Dublin. Through the HSE, we have been working with our colleagues across the system to ensure that we are planning in a collaborative way around children's health. We have an integrated care programme for children, such that we engage not only with our colleagues in Cork, Limerick and Galway in the acute system but with colleagues in social care, community and mental health, which is important in terms of the experiences of First World countries with young people and mental health issues. We have identified that there are services that could and should be done locally in the regional units. The model of care maps the services that can be done in regional units and the services that can be done in local units and the required resourcing of them. We have appointed a paediatric network lead, a surgeon, to work with the regional units on the appropriate utilisation of their beds. This is about transforming children's health care.

The biggest transformation is around ambulatory services. What we are putting out at Connolly Hospital and Tallaght Hospital is testing within the Irish system the feasibility of safely delivering outpatient, trauma, orthopaedic and urgent care in an efficient manner.

We would envision that in testing it in these units, it is something that the wider system could look at in terms of bed utilisation. There is repatriation needed from the Dublin hospitals to the regional units, but only in a supported way. We work closely with the clinician we have put in place in regard to the putting in place of education and supports in the regional units. Increasingly, we are holding shared clinics in the regional units. We are trying to keep services child and family centric so that service users can access services locally and only need to come to Dublin as required. There is no additionality. Cork has plans for a hospital. In regard to the plans for the elective hospitals, we have been working with our colleagues in the regional units identifying the parameters that we use for the model of care to try to ensure the most efficient use of bed planning. Cork is the only region that has identified additional plans.