Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 23 January 2019
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health
National Children's Hospital: Discussion (Resumed)
Okay. I will go back to the start in respect of this project. The statutory instrument setting up the original board is dated 2007. It now looks like it will be 2022 when it is finished so we are talking about a 15-year timescale. I was wondering whether the HSE and the Department have learned anything from this process. Initially, we wasted five years between 2007 and 2012 when a site was picked but An Bord Pleanála turned down the final planning permission, so we had to start from scratch again between 2011 and 2013. Have we learned anything from that as regards forward planning? Every hospital we build seems to take an enormous amount of time getting from the initial discussion to turning the key and opening the door. Can we set in place a process for dealing with these projects? We do not seem to have a structured process in place. Is this being examined by the Department and the HSE in respect of new projects?
The second issue I want to touch on is that there are to be 6,150 rooms in this hospital. My colleague, Deputy Donnelly, seems to have focused on the number of beds rather than the overall project itself. In Cork, we opened a brand new maternity facility more than 13 years ago with a theatre for gynaecology services that still has not been opened. Obviously there are three hospitals feeding into the design on this and they were looking for all of their requirements. Is there some duplication in respect of the overall size of this project? Will we have the same situation as we have now in Cork? We may open this project in 2022 and then ten years later find that part of it is not properly in use. I am wondering if that process was looked at. Each of the three hospitals, like everyone here, will have fought its corner. Was that really analysed? We are now talking about a huge project of 6,150 rooms. I know other people will just focus on the number of beds but it is more than beds. It is about rooms. From last week, I understand something like 141 outpatient departments will be running at any one time. Will there be duplication and will we end up with facilities lying idle? Are we satisfied that every part of this building will be fully operational from the day it opens? Obviously it will be a phased opening and will not be all in on a single day but two years from opening, will every aspect of this hospital be fully operational? I hope we will not have the scenario that we have in Cork. This is not just in Cork but in other hospitals around the country where facilities are lying idle because there is not funding available for staffing or to set them up.