The Government’s decision to proceed is all the more surprising given that former hospital development board chairman Philip Lynch – forced to resign more than a year ago after he queried the suitability of the site – branded the location as “a political decision, a northside job. I’ve no doubt in the world about it”.
The decision was made with unseemly haste in June 2006 “behind closed doors and signed off as government policy by the cabinet without any participation from the public, child health professionals or our elected representatives”, as Dr Roisín Healy, of the New Children’s Hospital Alliance, told An Bord Pleanála’s recent oral hearing.
“Should an infant require an intensive care bed after a complex surgical procedure in Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin, they would be transferred in their incubator to the new world-class paediatric intensive-care unit [ICU] across the corridor from the theatre suite,” says Dr Catherine Nix, an anaesthetics registrar at the hospital.
“We have potentially produced a service configuration that will have patients from outside Dublin with complex diseases requiring tertiary care having to access the city centre for services, while Dublin patients with less complex secondary-care needs will be travelling to the periphery of the city,” said retired paediatrician Dr Finn Breathnach. (Times) >
Filed under: Finn Breathnach, Mater Dublin, Roisín Healy Tagged: Development, Paediatrics
