THE NEW national children’s hospital is to open in 2016, Minister for Health James Reilly has pledged.
The Minister said that enabling works on the hospital, which will be located on the campus of the Mater hospital in Dublin, will take place next year. Building work will start in 2013.
Dr Reilly declined to forecast the cost of the project – previously estimated at about €650 million – on the basis that it had yet to go out to tender. He confirmed that some of the money would come from the proceeds of the sale of the licence to operate the National Lottery.
“My understanding is that there is going to be a securitised portion and a capital quantum will come our way in relation to bridging the gap and aiding us to go ahead with the children’s hospital in the full confidence that we won’t be short at the end.”
The Minister also said that the building of the new hospital was not contingent on considerable sums being provided in charitable donations for the project as had previously been the case.
The children’s hospital is one of three flagship health service projects to be developed as part of the Government’s capital investment programme. This will see an investment of €1.95 billion, or €390 million a year in the health service between 2012-2016.
A new central mental hospital, to replace the current 160-year-old facility in Dundrum, is to be built in Portrane in north Dublin.
Separately, the development of radiation oncology facilities for cancer patients, which will see facilities and linear accelerator machines put in place in St James’s and Beaumont hospitals in Dublin as well as in Cork and Galway, with satellite units in Limerick and Waterford, is to go ahead.
Dr Reilly said it was still being evaluated as to whether funding for the national radiation oncology project, which has been estimated to cost between €100 million and €200 million, is to come directly from the exchequer or by means of a public-private partnership. A final decision on this is expected to be made by next Easter.
Dr Reilly said a major amount of money was to be allocated for the development of primary care centres in which GPs, public health nurses, physiotherapists, occupation therapists and other healthcare professionals would work in the same building.
Minister of State at the Department of Health Kathleen Lynch said the development of the new central mental hospital would start next year and take five years to complete.
She said that as part of the infrastructure to support the new facility there would be a unit for persons with intellectual disability as well as a child and adolescent unit. She said there would be four regional centres including assessment and step-down facilities.