Planning permission for a 150-bed private hospital on the outskirts of Limerick city, owned by Bon Secours Health System (BSHS), has been granted by Limerick city and county council.
The “state-of-the-art” hospital, costing €150million, will be constructed on a wider site being developed by Kirkland Investments, at Towlerton Ballysimon, Limerick, and will double BSHS’s total staff in the county to 500.
The Bon Secours group, which owns and operates Barrington’s private hospital in Limerick City, said it was proceeding “with immediate effect to detail design stage, with tendering for a construction partner to commence shortly, and work on the site to begin in January of next year”.
Jason Kenny, CEO of Bon Secours Limerick, said it has already “doubled staff and patient numbers” at Barrington’s Hospital, but that “due to site restrictions there we are developing this state-of-the-art new hospital at Ballysimon in order to meet the needs of the region”.
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Dr Siobhán Grimes, clinical director at Bon Secours Limerick, said the new hospital “will raise the quality and scope of medicine in the Limerick area to unprecedented levels”.
Rudi Butler, Kirkland Investments Ltd, said the development would “strengthen Limerick’s profile and indeed the wider mid-west region and form a very important part of the overall development plans which Kirkland have for the Towlerton lands which comprises of 62 acres”.
BSHS is the largest private hospital operator in the country, employing 4,000 people in Dublin, Tralee, Cork and Galway.
In 2017, it acquired and refurbished the 200-year-old Barrington’s Hospital with an additional €4 million investment in new services and improvements in operating theatres.