Dr. Rhona Mahony:

I am not familiar with the adjacent site. The point is it does not achieve the physical integration that this co-location would achieve. One of the points of the co-location is that in an emergency, where someone is haemorrhaging, with 4 litres of blood loss, for example, we must try to manage such cases in a stand-alone facility. Sometimes we must transfer a patient when we cannot stop the bleeding. We might need intervention radiology, for example, where we can put little plugs in blood vessels to stop the bleeding using an imaging technique. We may need vascular or haematology backup. We feel very lonely at 4 a.m. when we have a major haemorrhage.

In the new hospital we would be physically linked with the St. Vincent's hospital at theatre and intensive care unit level. We would not be going outside from one building to another. We would be wheeling a patient down the corridor to the interventional radiology, the intensive care unit or the theatre. It is the really critical and brilliant element of the co-location that we will not find on another site. That is as well as all the other services. It is one of the really important elements.

We could build a hospital on the St. Mary's site or wherever else. If it does not have the physical co-location, we would be missing a really important part of what this would achieve. We want to be in a big hospital setting where we would not have to make transfers down any road because we would be right there and integrated where we need to be, particularly in emergencies.