Accessibility, building space and development costs were the main reasons given by the Health Service Executive (HSE) yesterday for selecting the campus of the Mater hospital in Dublin as the new national children's hospital.
The executive said all sites proposed for the development, which will merge Dublin's three existing children's hospitals, were vetted and in the end it came down to either the Mater or St James's hospitals.
Ultimately, it was determined that if the hospital was to be built at the Mater it could be constructed more quickly than at St James's as significant work had already been done at the Mater's north inner-city campus in preparation for a move by Temple Street hospital to the site.
While the Mater campus will also have room to accommodate maternity services (and all maternity hospitals in the capital have indicated a willingness to move to the site of the new children's hospital), no decision has been made on what maternity services will move there. Discussions on this will now begin.
Although the new children's hospital is to be built in the constituency of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, the head of the HSE, Prof Brendan Drumm, rejected any suggestion of political interference in the decision-making process. The selection process had been independent and rigorous, he insisted.
He added that even if the Mater car park was built on, there would be a comprehensive carparking plan for the hospital, together with play areas and accommodation for families to stay with children. It is not clear when the hospital will be built.
Prof Drumm said researchers at Trinity College Dublin had conducted a study of travel times by private and public transport to the main Dublin hospitals, all of which were bidding for the hospital. "The centre that has the shortest travel time by road of the existing hospitals is the Mater hospital," he said. In addition, a metro was to be built close to the Mater.
The decision on which site should be chosen for the new hospital was made by a taskforce representative of the Department of Health, the HSE and the Office of Public Works. It had met more than 20 times since February and finally decided the Mater site was the most appropriate, following site visits and a detailed assessment of proposals put forward by the six Dublin teaching hospitals in particular.
The taskforce put together a 48-page report setting out how it came to its decision, and when the HSE board met on Thursday it adopted the report. The decision only now remains to be approved by the Cabinet.
The HSE published the taskforce's report yesterday. It referred back to the fact that an expert report from McKinsey consultants published earlier in the year had found there should be one major children's hospital in the State, it should be in Dublin, and it should be adjacent to an adult hospital. It also said the site chosen should have space for future expansion and be easily accessible by public transport. Hospitals bidding for the new children's hospital were assessed on these criteria.
The taskforce also made a number of additional recommendations. These were that the new paediatric hospital have its own board of management, separate budget and identity, and that decisions on the location and configuration of urgent care centres, which will be a back-up local A&E-type service for children in the greater Dublin area, should now progress.
Furthermore, it recommended that a review of the configuration of maternity services in the Dublin region should be undertaken as soon as possible. "A recommendation in relation to the future configuration of maternity services in Dublin was beyond the scope and timescale available to the joint task group," it said.
It also recommended the HSE undertakes a review of adult acute services in Dublin after it found several key specialities are spread across different hospitals.