Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 12 February 2019
504. Deputy Clare Daly asked the Minister for Health if his attention has been drawn to the recent opening of an 18,000 sq. m, 148-bed, state-of-the-art children’s hospital in Germany (details supplied). [7027/19]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe new children’s hospital project includes a hospital on the St James’s campus and two outpatient and urgent care centres on the campuses shared with Connolly and Tallaght Hospitals. Together, they will provide all secondary, or less specialised, acute paediatric care for children from the Greater Dublin Area. Furthermore this hospital will also be the single national tertiary/quaternary centre for highly specialised paediatric care for children from all over Ireland with the critical mass to deliver best outcomes.
The Outpatient and Urgent Care Centres will improve geographic access to urgent care for children in the Greater Dublin Area. Consultant-led urgent care, with 4-6 hour observation beds, appropriate diagnostics and secondary outpatient services including rapid access general paediatric clinics as well as child sexual abuse unit examination, observation and therapy rooms will be provided in the Outpatient and Urgent Care Centres. The centre at Connolly will also include two HSE paediatric care primary care dental services operating theatres.
An international cost benchmarking study commissioned by the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board to identify construction costs for similar large scale international hospital projects, sourced data provided in relation to 10 projects ranging in size from 45,000 sq.m to 350,000 sq.m. The report concluded that, in terms of cost per sq.m, the new children's hospital was at the higher end but aligned with similar projects, reflecting that the cost per sq.m of €6,500 matches international norms.
The cost per sq.m range is inevitably impacted by the individual briefs for each of these projects and the limitations of international cost benchmarking generally. There are challenges in drawing cost comparisons between the national children's hospital due to be completed in 2022 and an 18,000 square metre 148 bed, children’s hospital in Germany which is already open. With its focus on education, research and innovation, the new children’s hospital will also be a research-intensive academic healthcare institution, which creates a path between the patient, the classroom and the laboratory. In relation to bed numbers, the number and breakdown in type of bed across the three sites reflects the new model of care which has been planned and designed in a sustainable manner to deliver modern paediatric care now and into the future.
