Bord Pleanála reported to have refused permission for National Children's Hospital

[Sunny]

Dublin is the easliest place to get to from anywhere in the country.
The Crumlin site was never going to be big enough. Bertie is still casting his shadow of self-interest across the country.
Oh, and just because it's built in Tallaght doesn't mean the existing management should run it.
St. James is currently the biggest hospital in the country. It has no childrens facility so would hardly want one.

St. James's was in the running for it originally so they did want it. As did Beaumount.

Also I don't think anyone can argue that the Mater is a better Adult teaching hospital than Tallaght with more specialties which is a key part of international best practice when deciding where to locate a Childrens hospital.

 

[Sunny]

The original logic right or wrong:

Arising from the McKinsey report, a joint HSE and Department of Health and Children task group was established to advise on the optimum location of the proposed new hospital. Each of the six major adult academic hospitals in Dublin, including Tallaght Hospital, made a detailed submission to the task group. The task group concluded that each of the sites adequately demonstrated the feasibility of accommodating the proposed new paediatric hospital and a new maternity hospital.
However, the task group considered that three of the hospitals, the Connolly Hospital, St. Vincent’s University Hospital and Tallaght Hospital, did not offer the necessary breadth and depth of tertiary services to complement the paediatric hospital and on this ground those three sites were ruled out as co-location options. Following assessment of the remaining sites, the group concluded that Beaumont Hospital was significantly less suitable, in terms of ease of access, than either the Mater Hospital or St. James’s Hospital, particularly for the children of the greater Dublin area who will use the hospital for all of their hospital care. The task group found that both the Mater Hospital and St. James’s Hospital demonstrated their ability to meet all of the assessment criteria set by the group and, on the basis of these criteria, it was not possible for the group to recommend one location on a basis that rendered it clearly distinguishable from the other. The group decided the selected location would have to develop clear cross-site, team-working arrangements with the corresponding adult specialist teams based at the other adult hospitals.
In the context of the current configuration of adult specialties, the group considered the Mater Hospital to be in a better geographical position than St. James’s Hospital to facilitate a clinical network of critical adult and paediatric specialties. Accordingly, the task group recommended that the new national tertiary paediatric hospital should be built on a site to be made available by the Mater Hospital. The board of the HSE and the Government endorsed the task group’s report and its recommendations.

 

[Shawady]

The state owns a couple of hundred acres of land in Abbotstown which is right beside Blanchardstown hospital. This is off the M50 so it mught have some potential.