Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent)
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739. To ask the Minister for Health if due consideration was given to the need to co-locate a maternity hospital with the National Children's Hospital before permission was granted for the hospital and the views (details supplied) of 15 signatories to a submission to An Bord Pleanála regarding the hospital, including three from the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, six from the Department of Cardiology, and six from the Joint Department of Paediatric Intensive Care Medicine at Our Lady's Hospital in Crumlin in Dublin 12. [9881/16]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The previous Government's decision to locate the new children's hospital at the St James's campus was based on the over-riding priority of best clinical outcomes for our children and, in particular, the sickest of these. As announced in June 2016 by my predecessor, it is intended that the Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital will relocate to the campus in time, achieving tri-location of paediatric, maternity and adult services on one campus. Tri-location has benefits for children, adolescents, newborns and mothers. In all cases, the benefits of tri-location are maximised where the adult hospital provides the broadest possible range of clinical sub-specialties and expertise, and which delivers the most significant breadth and depth of clinical and academic research on site. St James's Hospital has the widest range of sub-specialties and highest level of clinical complexity of all hospitals in the country, as well as a strong and well-developed research infrastructure, making it the hospital that best meets the criteria to be the adult co-location partner.

In submitting its planning application for the children's hospital at the St James's campus, the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board as a matter of good planning practice provided full information on all known future developments for the St James’s campus, including the intention to develop a maternity hospital in due course. The planning application was submitted in August 2015. Consideration of the planning application, and of submissions made to An Bord Pleanála relating to the application, were matters for An Bord Pleanála, which issued its decision on 28 April 2016. The decision, which is published onalong with the Inspector's Report, sets out that "in making its decision, the Board had regard to those matters to which, by virtue of the Planning and Development Acts and Regulations made thereunder, it was required to have regard. Such matters included the submissions and observations received by it in accordance with statutory provisions."