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

The Minister, who unfortunately cannot be here, has asked me to answer on his behalf.

I acknowledge that there are some challenges in accessing services in the three children’s hospitals at present. The Children’s hospital group works with the each of the three paediatric hospitals to manage capacity challenges, providing support in terms of bed utilisation on a daily basis. Within Our Lady's Children’s Hospital, Crumlin, all funded beds are open and currently in use, with the exception of one bed closed for renovation purposes. The hospital group is working with the National Treatment Purchase Fund to identify clinically appropriate groups of patients for treatment as part of a waiting list initiative. The hospital group also continues to work with the acute hospital division in the HSE as well as with staff in the mental health primary care and disability services to reduce the length of stay of patients in hospital and to improve pathways of care for children and adolescents, which will, in turn, ease pressures on hospital capacity.

The Minister is committed to significantly improving health care for all children in Ireland. We have already taken enormous strides to achieve this.For example, an additional €9 million has been provided to the HSE in its 2018 budget allocation, specifically to develop paediatric orthopaedic services, including further increasing access to scoliosis services. As Members will know, the project to develop the new children’s hospital is an extraordinary opportunity to enhance paediatric services for children. Indeed, part of the rationale for the development of the new children’s hospital was to address the existing physical infrastructure across the three children’s hospitals in the group. There is limited ability to increase bed capacity in the existing hospitals between now and the opening of the new hospital. The design of the new children’s hospital and two outpatient and urgent care centres at Tallaght Hospital and Connolly Hospital was based on a thorough analysis of capacity and demand, and is in line with best practice.

The new children’s hospital is due to be completed in 2022. This will be preceded by the opening of the centres in Connolly and Tallaght hospitals in 2019 and 2020 to provide consultant-led urgent care and secondary outpatient services, including rapid access general paediatric clinics. Each centre is projected to deal with 25,000 urgent care and 15,000 outpatient attendances annually, resulting in a significant improvement in access to services. Overall, the new facilities are expected to provide an increase in capacity of 16% for inpatients, 26% for day cases, 47% for outpatient attendances and 7% for emergency department, ED, attendances. My Department is also progressing the Children’s Health Bill 2018 to establish a single body to govern and manage paediatric services across the three hospitals in Dublin in advance of the move to the new facilities. A clinical integration strategy has been developed to integrate the clinical services across the hospital in advance of the move and to ensure a smooth transition to the new facilities. There will be significant advantages to having integrated clinical and non-clinical services across the existing sites, one of which is the introduction of a central referrals system for all patients requiring paediatric services to maximise available capacity. The transition of staff and services to the new children’s hospital will ultimately mean that all specialist services will be provided under one roof, tri-located with adult acute facilities.

I thank the Senator. I will respond further on some of the other issues she raised.