NATIONAL CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL: SOME €110 million of the funding required for the new National Children's Hospital will have to come from philanthropy and fundraising, but none of it has yet been raised.
As the development board behind the new €650 million hospital announced it had commenced engagement this week with An Bord Pleanála about securing planning for the facility, its chief executive, Eilísh Hardiman, said it would not have been appropriate to commence fundraising for the project before plans for the hospital had been drawn up and planning permission sought.
However, she was confident, going on the experience of other similar projects abroad, that philanthropic donations would be forthcoming.
She said a fundraiser was to be recruited by the board to conduct a global campaign. "We will be looking to the diaspora to actually progress this campaign."
The exchequer has committed €400 million to the project, and a further €50 million had been committed in the Health Service Executive's capital plan for the construction of an urgent-care centre in Tallaght to cater for the needs of children requiring emergency services in south Dublin after the new hospital opens.
A further €90 million is expected to be generated by private clinics, retail units and an underground car park with up to 1,000 spaces, as well as from research and education grants.
Ms Hardiman said the board had "categorically confirmed" that the State funding for the project was still secure.
A spokesman for Minister for Health Mary Harney pointed out later that despite the plan for a €1 billion cut in capital spending the Government had committed to the new children's hospital in its list of investment priorities for 2010 to 2016 published in July.
Asked if money for the hospital had been ringfenced, the Department of Finance said it was up to each Government department to manage its own capital budget and to prioritise projects within its allocation.
Earlier Ms Hardiman told a press briefing she expected the new children's hospital - into which all three existing children's hospitals in Dublin will be merged - to open some time in 2015, but this would depend on planning permission being granted next year.
She said it would be a world-class facility, with 445 inpatient and day beds, all in single rooms, and with accommodation for parents to be with their sick children. She said at present up to 200 parents have to sleep on the floor under their children's beds.
Meanwhile, Ms Hardiman refused to be drawn on the controversy surrounding the resignation of her board's chairman Philip Lynch last week. She said she did not know why he resigned; she was not privy to that information.
It is understood Mr Lynch resigned over concerns about a gap in funding for the project, as well as fresh anxieties about the decision to locate the hospital on the campus of the Mater hospital.
Ms Hardiman insisted the hospital's development board, set up in 2007 to design and build the hospital, was a cohesive unit which strongly supported the project.
She added there would never be total consensus in the medical community about the plans for the new hospital, but the vast majority of paediatricians supported it.
The faculty of paediatrics at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in a statement yesterday said it strongly supported the proposed National Children's Hospital. It said it should proceed as a matter of urgency and adequate funding must be provided to equip and staff it to best international standards. Dr Martin White, dean of the faculty which represents about 140 paediatricians, said he believed the debate on the location of the hospital had already been held and if it was reopened the opportunity to build the facility might be lost.
However, Dr Róisín Healy, a member of the faculty and a retired Crumlin hospital consultant, expressed concern that such a statement could have been issued by the faculty without consulting all members. She is vociferously against plans to build the hospital on the Mater site and indicated she would continue to object, including at any Bord Pleanála hearings.
Dr White said she was entitled to her view, but insisted the vast majority of paediatricians in the country supported the project.