Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will respond to one or two of the issues that have been raised around parking, which has been raised by a lot of people. Contrary to what has been said, there will be 675 spaces provided for families based on the current project's future demands. There will be 325 spaces for staff. That is a total of 1,000 spaces, three times the current number of parking spaces for the existing paediatric hospitals as they are. I will talk a little bit about public transport as well. Contrary to some of the comments about access to the new national children's hospital, the Luas is on its doorstep and the 123 bus route passes by it. The 40, 13 and 68 bus routes all go back and forth from the north side of the city and are located in and around the St. James's Street area. It is two stops from Heuston Station on the Luas as well. There is a lot of significant transport in the local area to bring people to and from the hospital. Some people mentioned that people go to hospitals by car, which they do. They did that in Crumlin for years. Let us look at the problem the people in Crumlin have had down through the years in not being able to access or park outside their own houses or having to go three streets down to find a space when they come home from work in the evening. This is going to be a really positive approach by which there will actually be parking spaces for people who are bringing sick children to the hospital. There will be spaces that people will be able to book in advance.

Deputy Catherine Byrne: I will respond to one or two of the issues that have been raised around parking, which is an issue that has been raised by a lot of people. Contrary to what has been said, there will be 675 spaces provided for families based on the current project's future demands. There will be 325 spaces for staff. That is a total of 1,000 spaces, three times the current number of parking spaces for the existing paediatric hospitals as they are. I will talk a little bit about public transport as well. Contrary to some of the comments about access to the new national children's hospital, we have the Luas, which is on the doorstep of it. We have the 123 bus that passes through it. We have the 40 bus, the 13 bus and the 68 bus all going back and forth from the northside of the city located in and around the St. James's Street area. It is two stops from Heuston Station on the Luas as well. There is a lot of significant transport in the local area to be able to bring people to and from the hospital. Some people mentioned that people go to hospitals by car, which they do. They did that in Crumlin for years. Let us look at the problem the people in Crumlin have had down through the years in not being to access their houses, park outside their own houses or having to go three streets to find a space when they come home from work in the evening. This is going to be a really positive approach by which there will actually be spaces for people who are bringing sick children to the hospital. There will be spaces that people will be able to book in advance.

Regarding the bed capacity, there will be 473 beds in single rooms with en suites for families in areas. I am somebody who spent quite a considerable number of years travelling back and forward to Crumlin hospital with my own children and grandchildren when they were sick. The hospital's rooms and suites have not changed dramatically at all. As we all know, many of them are probably the same as they were when they were built in 1956. Many of them do not facilitate parents to actually sleep within the room with their child. That is going to completely change under the whole structure of the new national children's hospital for parents, whereby they will be able to sleep in the room with their very sick children and have en suites as well, instead of having to run out to go home and come back in to stay with their children, sleeping most nights on a chair outside the room in which their child is. There are a lot of things that are positive about building a new national children's hospital. The most positive thing is that it will be for all of the sick children of Ireland and not just a particular cohort of people.

The project to develop the new children’s hospital at St. James's is an extraordinary opportunity to enhance the health service for children in this country. The new children’s hospital will be a world-class facility to care for all of our children and young people from all over Ireland who are in need of specialised and complex care. The hospital will have two satellite centres, as the Minister has previously said, at Connolly in Blanchardstown and at Tallaght hospital campus. It will also be the local children’s hospital for children and young people in the greater Dublin area of Dublin, Wicklow, Kildare and parts of Meath. It will provide secondary health services for children, both emergency and planned. The majority of these patients may not have to stay in the hospital for treatment of their ailments and could be discharged on the same day.

It is also important to emphasis the future benefits for children across the country. The new children’s hospital is only one element, albeit a crucially important one, of the implementation of the national model of care for paediatrics and neonatology. The model advocates a hub-and-spoke model for paediatric services, facilitating delivery of the majority of care for children locally. The new children’s hospital will have a central role in this model of care. The new children’s hospital and its satellite centres in Tallaght and Connolly will work with the regional paediatric units in Limerick, Cork and Galway and in the 13 local paediatric units to deliver this new model of care. This will see children receive the right care at the right time in the right location and, where possible, close to home. Doctors and child health professionals fully accept that this is best practice. The hospital will provide specialist tertiary services for children from all over Ireland. The specialists in the new children’s hospital will provide outreach clinics in regional centres and engage in shared care arrangements with local paediatricians in regional paediatric units, thereby bringing their expertise closer to the patient with the aim of ensuring that children are able to access the right care in the right place at the right time.

For those who do not know the site in St. James's Hospital and do not know the surrounding areas, the new children’s hospital is one of the most exciting projects to take place in the Dublin 8 area for a long time. It will be a game changer for the area and will be a catalyst for employment in the community. There are significant economic and social benefits to gain from the new children’s hospital development for the community in Dublin 8, both during the construction phase and afterwards when the hospital is operational. The new children’s hospital is one of the first projects of this scale in Ireland to include social clauses as part of its construction contacts, committing to providing job opportunities for local people.

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