Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent)
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809. To ask the Minister for Health if he will appoint a dedicated full-time project management team to implement the plan to develop a Model 4 Hospital at University Hospital Galway, including the new cancer centre, bed block, emergency department, maternity department and paediatric department to ensure a coordinated delivery of the entire facility by 2030; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [24599/23]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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Design teams have already been appointed to deliver the new Emergency Department (ED), Women and Children’s block, replacement laboratories and cancer centre proposals at University Hospital Galway (UHG). At any one time there are multiple capital investment projects underway on the UHG campus involving different design teams and different works contractors. It is normal practice for there to be different design teams in place to deliver different projects on a single site.

Capital investment proposals of significant scale such as the Emergency Department (ED), Women and Children's Block, the regional cancer centre and the replacement Laboratories are independent projects which must be subject to development and approval in line with the Public Spending Code requirements. The ED and Women & Children’s Block proposal and the replacement Laboratories potential locations are sufficiently distanced from each other on the UHG campus that they could be developed concurrently without affecting the delivery of services, subject to the fulfilment of PSC requirements and the availability of funding within the Department’s National Development Plan capital envelope. The replacement laboratories, a significant development in its own right, is an enabling project for the regional Cancer Centre proposals and is currently envisaged as proceeding to construction ahead of the Cancer Centre development.

Overall co-ordination for all works / projects on the campus is achieved through close working relationships locally between HSE Capital & Estates, Saolta Hospital Group and management at Galway University Hospitals.

Strategies to mitigate any potential disruption to services while delivering capital works projects on a live, and extremely busy, hospital site are developed in advance of construction works and during the project lifecycle as part of an overall risk assessment.