Dr. Jimmy Sheehan:

The development board states there is potential for 20% added expansion, but when we look at what is required for hospitals, and I alluded briefly to this earlier, they are a bit like airports as they evolve constantly. We do not know what technology is coming down the road. Take the history of St. Vincent's University Hospital, which is relatively new at 45 years and I returned to work there in 1970. It has doubled its frontage, leaving the old hospital behind. It has added a multi-storey car park. In that period the original St. Vincent's Private Hospital has been taken over by the public area and there is a new private hospital. I reckon the total size of St. Vincent's University Hospital has increased between three and four times in a period of 45 years. This is typical of what happens with hospitals.

I mentioned seven building projects in Galway. A number of these were for new technology that was not present 12 years ago. For example, we put in a 3-tesla MRI scanner, which was not available ten years ago. We had to build for it. We put in a new radiotherapy bunker for stereotactic radiotherapy, which was not available. We also put in an interventional operating theatre, we added 50% to our capacity for inpatient beds, we doubled our day care and we trebled our laboratory space. All of this was in a very well-planned hospital that was only opened 12 years ago.

Talk about 20% potential for expansion for a children's hospital which is supposed to last for between 50 and 100 years is one of the reasons that motivated me to get involved in the Connolly Hospital project, because I saw how absolutely daft the whole situation is. It would be catastrophic for the future. What will actually happen in a very short timeframe is that new facilities will have to be added off-site. Take the example of a new facility for proton beam therapy, which is much more sophisticated than radiotherapy. It requires huge infrastructure. The Mayo Clinic has just built a new department which cost $200 million. This cannot be incorporated into an existing building. I am happy to pass around a leaflet to committee members to show why this is not possible. It is because a linear accelerator is the base of the proton beam. The leaflet will show committee members how sophisticated it is. It is groundbreaking therapy for children with brain and other tumours. It will become an essential part of our infrastructure but it could not possibly be on site. There is an absolute disaster down the road in terms of further development if the St. James's Hospital site is proceeded with.