All elective surgery at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, will be cancelled for one month from Monday next while the hospital transfers to new operating theatres, writes Eithne Donnellan, Health Correspondent.
Details of the cancellations are contained in minutes of the hospital's executive council meeting of May 22nd, which were yesterday obtained by The Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act.
A hospital spokeswoman said last night that all acute complex and minor cases will however be seen as will all cardiac cases.
Meanwhile, the report compiled by the Eastern Regional Health Authority into the death of two-year-old Limerick girl Róisin Ruddle after her heart operation was cancelled at the hospital last week is to be presented to the Minister for Health, Mr Martin today.
The Minister ordered the report after the child's death last Tuesday. The hospital has claimed a shortage of intensive care nurses, to care for the child after the operation, resulted in it being cancelled. She was discharged home and died within hours.
Meanwhile the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Mr Ivor Callely, when asked about conditions at Crumlin hospital yesterday, said he would love to "bulldoze" several of the State's hospitals and build new ones.
Mr Callely said the child's death was unacceptable. He said it was "equally frustrating" to learn subsequently that intensive care nurses were available at another children's hospital "a few miles across the city" and that they may have been able to assist.
He said he accepted Crumlin warranted investment. "I'd love to bulldoze a lot of our hospitals out of it and build new buildings but it's not quite as easy as that," he said.
"The Minister has given commitments to some improvements in Crumlin and I accept there is a lot more to do," he added.
Mr Callely made his comments after announcing a €16 million investment for the Incorporated Orthopaedic Hospital of Ireland in Clontarf. The investment will, he said, fund the opening of 96 orthopaedic beds, taking pressure off some of the major Dublin teaching hospitals.
He insisted the money for the development had been sanctioned by the Department of Finance. "I don't know how I managed to pull it but I did," he said.