Letters

The rising cost of children’s hospital

A work in progress

Thu Feb 15 2024 - 00:07

Sir, – The extraordinary cost of the new children’s hospital is being justified by some politicians who have expressed the view that children’s medical care will be much better in the new hospital.

Children will have more space, more privacy and more dignity in the new hospital and clearly this is to be welcomed. There will be also be better accommodation facilities for parents. Above all, there will be less cross-infection between the children as they will be nursed in single rooms.

However, the clinical staff will be the same staff as in the current paediatric hospitals – the same teams of consultants, surgeons and nursing staff. These teams care for children at present in accordance with the best international protocols for investigation and treatment of illnesses, using the investigations, equipment, techniques and drugs that these protocols recommend. The clinical staff will continue to follow the same protocols in the new hospital, so although the “hotel” facilities of the new hospital will be a great improvement over the current hospitals, those who expect the new hospital to furnish a dramatic improvement in clinical outcomes from major childhood illnesses may not see the results they wish for, as our medical and nursing clinicians are already fully up to date and already working to the best international standards.

The same logic applies to the new National Maternity Hospital; although a more modern building will improve conditions for patients, visitors and staff, the quality of the medical and nursing care is already top notch by international standards so there is little or no scope for clinical improvement. – Yours, etc,

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Dr TOM O’ROURKE,

Gorey,

Co Wexford.

Sir,– Back in 2016, the then health minister Leo Varadkar declared that “short of an asteroid hitting the planet”, the national children’s hospital would be up and running by 2020 (News, April 28th, 2016).

The long-delayed hospital continues to be a work in progress, and an astronomically expensive one at that. – Yours, etc,

PAUL DELANEY,

Dalkey,

Co Dublin.

Sir, – The cost of the new children’s hospital has risen to €2.2 billion (“National Children’s Hospital cost has risen to more than €2.2bn, Donnelly confirms”, News, February 13th). This figure has led to renewed public and political criticism of the project and its financial controls. It is undoubtedly a lot of money.

However, to place it in context, in 2022, the CSO recorded government income of €110 billion.

Ireland has therefore built a superb facility that will help to provide essential healthcare to the children of the whole island for at least the next 50 years for an amount roughly equivalent to the exchequer receipts of just one week. – Yours, etc,

MICHAEL McDERMOTT,

Rathgar,

Dublin 6.