The Minister for Health, Simon Harris has today announced that the Government has approved the investment required to enable the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board to award the construction contracts for the building of the main children’s hospital on the St James’s Hospital campus and the two Paediatric Outpatients and Urgent Care Centres on the Tallaght and Connolly Hospitals campuses.
This decision means that the project can proceed without delay. Construction of the new children’s hospital will commence within weeks.
The two Paediatric Outpatient and Urgent Care Centres at Tallaght and Connolly Hospitals will provide consultant-led urgent care with observation beds, diagnostics and secondary outpatient services including rapid access general paediatric clinics, developmental paediatrics and multidisciplinary care for children with chronic stable conditions.
The hospital will provide tertiary and quaternary paediatric services for the children of Ireland, including on an all-island basis, where agreed between the Department of Health and the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety in Northern Ireland.
At the site of the new children’s hospital, Minister Harris said, "Today is a huge step forward for the children’s hospital project, ending years of doubt as to whether it would ever be built. Today, there is no more doubt. This hospital will be built. The new state of the art children’s hospital, and the two Paediatric Outpatient and Urgent Care Centres, will provide a fitting place where we can provide our children with the best modern clinical care."
He added, "Our children have waited a long time for this new hospital but there is light at the end of the tunnel now. Site clearance work, which began last year, is almost complete and so we’ll start building works in the next few weeks. I anticipate that the new hospital, which will serve all of the children of all Ireland, will open in 2021, with the two Outpatient and Urgent Care Centres at Tallaght and Connolly opening well in advance at the end 2018 and the first quarter of 2019."
Source: www.businessworld.ie
