Ms Fionnuala Duffy:

It is important to note that from the outset of this project throughout its long history we have been very concerned to get it what I call "right-sized", to ensure it can actually deliver and meet the demand for children's services in the future. That will mean a gradual ramping-up and phased opening of services for this hospital. That is the appropriate thing to do. The activity and capacity planning started as far back as 2007 in order to get it right-sized. That has been continuously refreshed and amended, as my colleague has said, with a view to demographics and, more importantly, the changing clinical practices and the model of care that is right for children in this country. That has informed the capacity. In fact, rather than having idle capacity we were more concerned with having sufficient capacity in this hospital to meet the demand. Two things were really important in that regard.

The first of those was to gradually ramp up the staffing, which we have been doing. Over the last few years and in the years leading up to the opening of the new hospital, we have been investing in expanding the workforce from a revenue perspective. That is particularly apparent in 2019. The HSE's service plan includes significant investment in expanding the workforce in order that we can open the urgent care centre in Connolly hospital this year and plan for the opening of the Tallaght Hospital facility next year. It is very important that we ramp up that workforce because attracting and retaining the calibre of staff we need may be a limiting factor. We need to do that incrementally.

We found it equally important to avoid excessive demand on this hospital from the regions. Starting this year, we have been investing revenue in expanding the regional centres for paediatric care in Cork, Limerick and Galway. We are working to ensure the Dublin hospitals work very closely with them to keep providing children and families with services close to where they live rather than obliging them all to come up to the new hospital and the existing services. There is a lot of activity and workforce planning happening to get the capacity right, to get the regional capacity right and to attract and build up the workforce well in advance of the opening of the hospital.