Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I was stunned to read this week that the long-awaited and long-overdue national children’s hospital was set to be delayed further and that this supposedly state-of-the-art hospital may not even be accessible to wheelchair users. The Dáil was told in February that the project’s completion date would be this October and that the first patients could be expected to be treated there in spring 2025. It is now predicted that the hospital will not open to patients until 2026, which will be 12 years after the expected opening date.

Of significant concern is the report that a number of rooms within the hospital may not be accessible to wheelchair users. A number of doctors visited the site last year and were given a tour of the unfinished facility. At least two of six consultation rooms in one department were not wheelchair accessible. The doctors made clear at the time that they were extremely unhappy with this. They said that the rooms were very small and cramped and were akin to what they were using in the older hospitals.

We are constantly told that this is to be a modern and up-to-date building. At a cost of €2.6 billion, it has gone way over budget. It has been delayed 12 years. Now, it may not even be accessible. The project’s handling has been a disaster from the start. One has to ask who is responsible for the design. In this day and age, how could any professional stand over designing a building that is not accessible?

Ireland signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, in 2007, although it took us 11 years to ratify it and we were one of the last EU countries to do so. If we are going to behave like this, though, we should not have bothered. All public buildings should be fully accessible to ensure inclusivity for all persons. Buildings and services that are designed to meet the needs of disabled people serve the whole population well. We should not deny anyone access to anywhere. We hear of the ongoing court proceedings between the company responsible for the hospital’s construction and the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board. The company consistently says that the volume and frequency of design changes are the reasons for the continued delays and cost increases. If elementary considerations such as ensuring accessibility are still being overlooked, I dread to think what the original design was like.

Have the rooms referred to by the doctors in the report been modified to ensure they are accessible to all and, if so, at what additional cost? How can we be sure that the building has been constructed to universal design standards? Are there procedures in place to ensure that something like this cannot happen again, not just at this hospital, but at any public building?

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