John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)
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259. To ask the Minister for Health the purpose of the satellite children's hospital building to be located at Tallaght hospital; the facilities that will be provided there; if parents will be prevented from brining children directly to St. James's Hospital as opposed to going to Tallaght hospital for observation; the timeline for the development; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44881/17]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The strategy behind the development of the two centres OPD and Urgent Care Centre at Tallaght and Connolly is to improve local access to urgent care and OPD services for children in the Greater Dublin Area where that is clinically appropriate, to support community care paediatrics and to provide GPs with rapid access to OPD clinics. These centres will provide services and environments of the same quality as those delivered in the main hospital, with staff rotating through the outpatient and urgent care centres and the main hospital. The availability of consultant-led urgent care, with 4-6 hour observation beds and appropriate diagnostics will mean that families can avail of a range of services locally and this will reduce the need to attend the Emergency Department and OPD clinics at the main site. The site at Tallaght is easily accessible to large population areas with young families who will benefit from access to such paediatric services locally. Each Paediatric centre is projected to deal with 25,000 urgent care and 15,000 outpatient attendances every year.

The centres will be open during the known busiest daytime and evening hours and closed during the night when departments are at their quietest. It is anticipated that the Paediatric OPD and Urgent Care Centres at Tallaght and Connolly will open from 08:00 to 24:00, diagnostic services from 08.00 to 20.00 and outpatient services from 08:00 to 18:00. The construction of the Paediatric OPD and Urgent Care Centre at Tallaght is scheduled to be completed in 2020 in advance of the main hospital opening in 2022.