Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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848. To ask the Minister for Health the status of a plan to identify a site for a new hospital in Cork city as per the reforms under Sláintecare; if there are any suitable sites on the northside of the city that are being considered; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4336/21]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The National Development Planstated that, “New dedicated ambulatory elective only hospital facilities will be introduced in Dublin Galway and Cork. These facilities will provide high volume, low complexity procedures on a day and outpatient basis, together with a range of ambulatory diagnostic services. The high volume of demand for such services in these major urban centres is sufficient to justify the construction of dedicated ambulatory centres.”

The introduction of these dedicated elective/ambulatory sites is also in line with the recommendations of the 2018 Health Service Capacity Review and the Sláintecare Implementation Strategy (August 2018).

In 2019 the Sláintecare Programme Implementation Office (SPIO) established an Elective Hospitals Oversight Group, under the joint governance of the Health Service Executive, Department of Health and Sláintecare, to guide the development of the elective/ambulatory sites, as outlined in the National Development Plan(February 2018).

The Elective Hospitals Oversight Group has the following terms of reference:

1. To develop the elective hospital capacity with a ten-year horizon of need, which facilitates the separation of scheduled and unscheduled care.

2. To provide quicker, higher quality, safer care for selected, elective patients.

3. To create capacity for acute hospital sites and reduce/eliminate outlier boarding (trolleys).

4. To drive down waiting lists, both outpatient and inpatient/day case.

5. To reduce cancellations.

6. To reduce acute hospital footfall.

The Oversight Group is following the process outlined in the Public Spending Code. As required under the Code, a Strategic Assessment Report has been drafted for the development of Elective Hospital facilities. This sets out the rationale for investment, the alignment of the programme with strategic requirements of Government, some initial options and potential costs, and the governance of the programme. This document is complete and is currently going through the approval channels.

A high-level facilities spatial brief, including costs, a functional description and process flow, a site options appraisal and a Preliminary Business Case (PBC) in accordance with the public spending code has been drafted. The site option appraisal was carried out to explore indicative sites and was not a site selection process.