Gay Mitchell
Ceist:31 Mr. G. Mitchell asked the Minister for Health and Children the position regarding capital funding for a complete refurbishment of Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin, Dublin 12. [5977/02]
Priority Questions. - Hospitals Building Programme.
My Department received a document from the hospital setting out proposals for the future development of the hospital. These proposals were set out in broad outline form. However, the normal process for the initiation of a major capital development such as this, would be a request by the hospital and the Eastern Regional Health Authority for the establishment of a project team to consider issues such as scope of service, assessment of need, option appraisal, functional content, phasing and costings. This submission has not been made to my Department by the ERHA or by any other body.
Significant infrastructural investment is currently taking place at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin, including the development of operating theatres, day theatres, hospital sterile supplies department and ancillary works. This investment will amount to approximately €33 million on completion of the development in the coming years. I have sanctioned the project which has already commenced. In addition, last year, approval for a grant of £3 million, or €3.81 million, for urgent priority equipment and minor capital works was given to the hospital.
The recently published health strategy, entitled Quality and Fairness – a Health System for You, provides for a review of acute paediatric services to be completed by next year. The review will focus on the future organisation and delivery of hospital services for children. The aim will be to enhance the range and level of services available at regional level and to determine the most effective configuration of tertiary services. The scope for developing certain highly specialised services on an all-Ireland basis will also be explored.
The Minister said that €6 billion will be made available in the next four or five years for capital expenditure in health. The Minister can dress it up as €30 million if he so wishes, but offering £20 million to Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, in these circumstances, is pathetic. The hospital building is past its useful life, having been designed in 1940 and constructed in the 1950s. Contrary to what the Minister said, the hospital's management committee sought permission two years ago to carry out a formal planning exercise to obtain outline concept approval from the Department of Health and Children.
That is not true.
That approval has not been forthcoming from the Department or from the Eastern Regional Health Authority. Is the Minister aware that in other hospitals such as St. Vincent's and Beaumont, major re-development moneys are being spent, yet Crumlin has been left out? It has been left on the back-burner and children are being sent abroad for surgery because the hospital is not capable of dealing with their needs. I invite the Minister to stand with me on Cooley Road in Drimnagh, from where he will see the exterior of the hospital building. It is self evident that a major re-development of the national children's hospital is overdue. The hospital does not serve only the people of Crumlin and Drimnagh, but the whole country. The Minister's offer of a few measly euros is insulting.
The sum of €33 million, which is a substantial amount of money by any yardstick, will do much to transform cardiac facilities and operating theatres at the hospital. In 2000, I visited the hospital and I agree with the Deputy; I was unhappy with the state of that building. When I met members of the hospital management board they said, "Minister, you have got our plans", but I did not have them. It was discovered at that meeting that the plans had not been sent to me. They also asked whether the hospital was included in the national development plan. I visited the hospital in late 2000, long after the NDP allocations had been given out. The plans were not submitted to me prior to that, via the ERHA, as a project under the NDP and therefore the ERHA would not have included Crumlin originally among the other projects on the list. The Deputy is correct in saying there is a huge building programme going on in all the Dublin hospitals, including Tallaght.
Except Crumlin.
Yes, at that time.
Crumlin has been left out.
Crumlin was left out, not by me or my predecessor, but for some reason within the structures that pertain in the eastern region it did not get a look in. The project did not move forward but what did move forward – to be fair, under my predecessor – was the decision to develop and increase the capacity of the operating theatres by about 40%. That is where the €33 million is being spent. The design stages of the project commenced two to three years ago and we have now accepted tender and given sanction to go to construction. I will work with the ERHA to see if we can get the plans to a stage where we can appoint project and design teams to get it moving.
The other problem – I will be straight up about this because I have not been involved in Dublin politics for the past ten years, while the Deputy opposite has—
The Minister has certainly been involved in Cork politics.
I have indeed.
There is no shortage of re-development in his backyard.
There was an urgent need for some degree of convergence of views among all those involved in paediatrics in Dublin. Coming to the health portfolio from outside, I was taken aback by the degree of tension and disharmony within the overall paediatric community where hospitals vied for status, position and funding. That applies to the appointment of additional consultants as it does to additional facilities and expansions. That is an underlying feature of why, in the past, Crumlin hospital has not been advanced to the degree it should have. I assure the Deputy, however, that it will receive priority. It has already got priority, particularly in terms of the €33 million, the additional equipment we provided last year and the overall development of paediatric services.
Is the Minister aware that the infrastructure to support the current specialities in the national children's hospital in Crumlin does not exist? This is resulting in the use of prefabricated buildings which now total 20. This is completely unsatisfactory. The hospital has recently installed a burns unit in a prefabricated building. Crumlin needs €330 million, not €33 million. The Minister would not tolerate this if it was happening in Cork, but it is in Crumlin and I will not tolerate it. I do not care what promises the Minister makes coming up to the election, he has been the Minister for Health and Children for some time and the Government has been in office for almost five years. What he has done for this hospital is pathetic. For the Minister to suggest that no application has been made to him, or to the ERHA, is not correct.
I am sorry but it has not been.
I have it here in writing from a former prominent member of the hospital board. As a former member of the board myself, I know Crumlin has been left out deliberately and wilfully. If the Minister had an opportunity, he would close the hospital and move it to a marginal constituency where his party might get some support on the basis of moving it there, rather than taking account of the needs of those who require specialised paediatric care at Crumlin hospital.
We have gone two minutes over time. I would appeal to Deputies to ask questions rather than make statements.
Crumlin is a national hospital, it does not serve any particular constituency.
The Minister's behaviour concerning the hospital is a national disgrace.
Children from all over the country have benefited from the excellent service the staff provide there.
That has nothing to do with the Minister; it has to do with the good doctors, nurses and other staff.
We have already committed €33 million which is the first major capital investment by the State in development and refurbishment at Crumlin for 20 years.
The Minister throws them a few bob and spends all the money in his own backyard.
As a Dublin representative, I do not know what the Deputy was doing about it for so long.