Written answers

Wednesday, 18 September 2013

Photo of Niall CollinsNiall Collins (Limerick, Fianna Fail)
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1522. To ask the Minister for Health if he will confirm that the orthopaedic surgery for children has ceased in Tallaght Hospital, Dublin; if this means that the children's hospital at Tallaght is being downgraded; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38262/13]

Photo of James ReillyJames Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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The new children's hospital to be co-located with St James's Hospital on its campus will provide tertiary services for the country as a whole and secondary acute services for children in the Greater Dublin Area. The paediatric service at Tallaght Hospital will, along with Our Lady's Children's Hospital Crumlin and Children's University Hospital Temple Street, move to the new hospital when it is built.

Bringing the three hospitals together follows on from the recommendation of the 2006 McKinsey report that Ireland can support only one world-class tertiary paediatric hospital.

In advance of the move to the new hospital, I believe it is critically important that the three hospitals become operationally integrated. I have therefore established the Children's Hospital Group comprising the two hospitals and the Tallaght paediatric service, appointed Dr Jim Browne as Chair of the Children's Hospital Group Board, and last month appointed a further nine members to the Board. The CHGB will oversee the operational integration of the three existing paediatric hospitals in advance of the move to the new hospital.

In this regard, it will build on the cooperation and integration already underway among the three hospitals, which are working together as a paediatric network to provide the best possible outcomes for children. This includes transferring children from one hospital to another within the network where necessary for best outcomes. In this context, children requiring specialist orthopaedic treatment are transferred from Tallaght to Crumlin to avail of specialist paediatric care. This equates to 7% of children requiring access to paediatric orthopaedic services, with the vast majority (93%) of children attending Tallaght Hospital paediatric Emergency Department being treated and followed up in Tallaght. This does not represent any downgrading of the paediatric service at Tallaght, the staff of which will continue to play a vital role in the provision of paediatric acute services as part of the Children's Hospital Group and, ultimately, in the new children's hospital.

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