Seanad debates

Thursday, 7 March 2019

National Children's Hospital: Statements

 

10:30 am

Photo of Colm BurkeColm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. My apologies for being slightly late and for not being here when he arrived.

It is important to outline what the children's hospital will contain because some are giving the impression that it will have only 473 beds. As I understand it, there will be 380 inpatient beds and 60 acute beds. This must be considered from the overall context of the young population we have in this country. More than 1.25 million people are aged under 18 years and a state-of-the-art facility is needed to look after that population. The health, both physical and mental, of the vast majority of that population will be perfect but some people will run into difficulties. Even from the day they are born, some will have healthcare problems and it must be ensured the best system is in place to look after them from start to finish.

A number of hospitals currently deal with paediatrics. There has been a long process. It is interesting that we have gone through 22 Ministers for Health since this hospital was first talked about. Instead of talking about it, the Government is building it. That is the difference. We will have a hospital which will have more than 6,150 rooms, run 140 clinics at any one time, and will have 380 inpatient beds, 93 of which will be for day care. It will also have 53 rooms for parents who want to stay overnight. One must bear in mind that the 60 acute beds will be for children whom staff will not know, at 11 p.m. or midnight, whether they will come through by 8 a.m. It is important, therefore, as well that parents are looked after because they play an important part in making sure that the best care is provided for these children.

There have been delays but the Government had a choice to make. An Bord Pleanála turned down the planning permission for the Mater site in February 2012. On the new planning permission, the Government had to go back to the design stage and go through the planning process. The new planning permission was granted by An Bord Pleanála in April 2016. That is less than three years ago. Ministers have got on with doing the job of getting in the tenders and going through and getting the work done to excavate the site, lay the foundations and building, most importantly, rather than putting it back for further consideration.

Yesterday I was on a conference call with people who are developing a children's hospital in Ontario in Canada. I had been in touch with the Canadian embassy and officials gave me the contact names.In fairness to the people in Canada, they rang me at a set time yesterday and I spoke to three people. As much as $800 million Canadian dollars has been raised for the children's hospital project there. The total cost of the project is $3.7 billion Canadian dollars, which includes the building of an office complex and the children's hospital. The target is to raise $1.3 billion Canadian dollars and I understand the state will provide about $2 billion Canadian dollars for the project.

Interestingly, the people with whom I spoke yesterday advised me that in Toronto building inflation has increased by 1% each month over the past 15 months and they expect it to continue to rise over the next number of years as the project proceeds. They must first build new office accommodation for more than 3,000 staff in the form of a 22-storey building, which will be funded by their own resources. It is intended to decant all of the existing administration staff into the new office building, after which a major demolition job will be required before the children's hospital can be started. Another interesting point is that they must provide all of the funding for the equipment that will be go into the hospital. I am not saying we should go down that road but when people compare and claim various projects were done for X number of euro or pounds, they have obviously not considered the real issue.

The children's hospital in Manchester, which I understand has 370 beds, cost £504 million or between €650 million or €660 million. It started in 2004 and took five years to build. When we make comparisons, let us do so properly. Let us consider the national children's hospital project on the basis that we are providing a state-of-the-art facility alongside an existing adult hospital, which will have more than 1,020 beds and key expertise for adult care across a range of areas, including a burns unit. These experts will also be available should the need arise in terms of children facing major health issues. That is why the co-location with St. James's is so important and the project needs to be fully endorsed as the best way forward for healthcare in this country.

We can talk all we like about a lack of full transparency. I am a member of the Joint Committee on Health and every document and set of minutes that I have sought has been produced. People were concerned and expressed concerns about the way things had changed but we had a choice. Planning applications do not include a definitive and detailed description of each and every room. The planning permission was for the basic structure, the supply of all the services, emergency exits and so forth but the application did not feature the fine details of each and every room. The board had a choice, which it was advised of, to wait 12 months to have the fine detail worked out and then invite tenders, or it could invite tenders and get on with the project, which is what it did. That was the right decision because we are now between a year and 18 months ahead of schedule in dealing with the project. We can park the issue, decide not to go ahead and have another debate but that would mean going through another five Ministers for Health before the hospital is finally built. Our challenge and job is to go ahead and get the project built. We are accountable in terms of cost and taxpayers are entitled to know exactly how much everything costs. That information has been provided. It is important that people study the documents that have been published and made available. We should also wait for PricewaterhouseCoopers to produce its report and if issues arise, we need to deal with them.

I thank the Minister for being here to deal with this matter today.

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