Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

Quality and care. Many of our very sick children travel outside this jurisdiction. Many of us who have met the parents of very sick children know they would go anywhere in the world to have the best care for their children. We are speaking about tertiary facilities for children from the entire country. Many of them will arrive by helicopter and others will come by ambulance. They will come from other hospitals throughout the country. It will also provide secondary care for children in the Dublin region and it is estimated that 65% of the children attending the hospital will be from the Dublin region.

The will be an ambulatory care centre at Tallaght Hospital which will provide ambulatory care on a day case basis. I know Senator Fitzgerald will be interested in the Tallaght facility and I want to put on the record what will happen there. It will provide emergency and elective ambulatory care. Medical and surgical day care services will be provided through 28 day care beds, three operating theatres and two procedure rooms. Outpatient services will be provided through 26 consulting examination rooms. The urgent care centre will also provide emergency care services for the local population of children and this will be co-terminous. It will be done at the same time because it is an integral part of the project.

The new children's hospital will have 445 beds with 392 inpatient beds and 53 day beds. All inpatient rooms will be single with en suite facilities and overnight accommodation for parents. There will be 62 critical care beds divided into intensive care and high dependency. There will be 13 operating theatres and two procedure rooms. There will be an emergency department, a family resource centre, play areas, external gardens and courtyards, a therapy park with hydro pool and gym, a hospital school, 1,000 underground car parking spaces, family accommodation provided by the Ronald McDonald House charity, and undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing professional education facilities. The hospital will be 112,000 sq. m and will be 16 storeys high. In many debates that have taken place worldwide it has been suggested that vertical delivers better quality than horizontal. I have followed some of these debates and last week I read a very good article on this. Some advance that a vertical environment, where everyone is much closer to theatres, critical care, intensive care and access to car parks, has a very positive impact on the outcome of care rather than the traditional layout where one might walk not quite for miles but for long distances to get from A to B in a hospital.

I am happy we are having this debate in the House. It is important we all support the project as the parents do and as most paediatricians do. I accept it is not unanimous. The board of Crumlin hospital is represented on the development board, which is chaired by John Gallagher because a vacancy occurred in recent times. I urge everyone concerned about sick children in Ireland to come behind this project. If for any reason this project were not to proceed, we would not see a new children's hospital in our lifetime. Of this I have absolutely no doubt. The alternative to having this facility is the status quo and this is not acceptable. Neither Temple Street hospital nor Crumlin hospital are fit for purpose and anyone who has visited them recently will have seen the huge inadequacies in both of these hospitals. They are very old hospitals.

It would require major refurbishment but refurbishment is not possible because of the age of both hospitals. It would require significant capital investment to make those hospitals fit for purpose which, I suggest, is a sum of money in excess of the money to build this new hospital. It will be a great testimony to the will of the people of Ireland, notwithstanding the current financial circumstances, to continue with the project. The development board began discussions with An Bord Pleanála on 5 November as this is considered to be a strategic investment project. An Bord Pleanála has approximately three months to indicate whether the project qualifies as a strategic investment project - we believe it qualifies- and a formal application will then be made. The intention is that planning permission would be granted in the autumn of next year and that construction would begin at the end of 2011 and be completed at the end of 2014 with the hospital being commissioned at the start of 2015.