New facilities costing £2 1/2 million at the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin have been officially opened by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) unit and a cardiac catherisation unit were also opened yesterday.
Mr Brian Joyce, chairman of the hospital, said the projects were indications that they were striving to "stay in the vanguard of medical technology". "After 10 years of operation, we are today taking ourselves forward again to utilise the next generation of technology."
He said coronary heart disease was the single greatest cause of death in Ireland. The new state-of-the-art £1 million laboratory would permit complex procedures to be performed, and avoid the need for surgery in some cases.
The £1 1/2 million MRI unit, a method of taking pictures of different parts of the body, enables advances in a range of diagnostic techniques that are not possible with traditional X-rays. Mr Ahern said work on the hospital's development would go ahead early next year. "Progress has been regrettably slow." There were still some "technical" hitches but they would be quickly resolved and "detailed planning" would begin in the New Year.