Ms Eilísh Hardiman:

Yes, I am going to do that. For example, we have 300 children with cancer and a lot of them have leukaemia. We are rated fourth in the world for outcomes for paediatric leukaemia. Some children require bone marrow transplant. At the moment if a relative such as the mother or father is the donor, he or she has to have bone marrow extracted in St. James’s Hospital, while at the same time the child is in a theatre in Crumlin hospital. The bone marrow is brought over and has to be donated there. That service is not moving from St. James’s, which has been well established as a leading national service for adults. We want a situation whereby the mother and child are on the same campus at this very traumatic time when the bone marrow is donated and is also transplanted.

Radiation oncology is already on the site. St. Luke’s has moved its services to St. James’s Hospital. We have children with cancer who require full body radiation and at the moment they travel to St. Luke’s. Our intention is to move that to St. James’s so that there is a corridor length involved when they attend for radiation oncology as opposed to having to travel from another campus for the service.

A total of 25% of consultants within the three children’s hospitals have adult-based specialties with a special interest in paediatrics. All of our cardiac surgeons are also adult cardiac surgeons. All of our neurosurgeons are also adult neurosurgeons and that will not change. None of those are at Connolly hospital.

At the moment, within the three children’s hospitals we have to engage with our colleagues in the adult hospitals to support us in some very specific areas. For example, we do not have vascular surgeons in paediatrics. We have a very early stage development of interventional radiology where imaging radiologists go through veins instead of using open surgery to get to the organs they need to get to. That is much more established in the adult services. Those types of consultants are very competent in dealing with highly complex situations around bleeding. Sometimes when we have children that need very complex surgery we invite those surgeons to attend and be in the theatre at the same time so that they can help the paediatric surgeons. Those are the types of specialists who are in St. James’s Hospital and who are not in other hospitals and who really help us at times of crisis and when we have really sick patients.

In regard to rare diseases, we definitely are working-----