A petition to relocate the National Children’s Hospital immediately has reached almost 50,000 signatures as of May 3.
The group, called Connolly For Kids Hospital, says that its main concern is ‘improving clinical outcomes for children’ and that to share a campus with St. James’ hospital (a plan which was granted permission five days ago) is ‘madness’.
Paediatrician and Press Officer for the group Dr Roisin Healy has said that the 145 acre greenfield M50 Connolly site is a ‘no-brainer, it’s just common sense’.
The hospital would be built beside the Connolly Teaching Hospital in Blanchardstown, where the Rotunda maternity hospital will soon relocate.
Irish medical academic Professor Anthony Staines has also expressed his support of the Connolly site, saying:
“A maternity hospital is the most important co-location –the sickest babies in the whole country are the ones that are being transferred to Crumlin [as newborns].”
The group, whose arguments can be found on Facebook, is primarily concerned that the St. James’ does not have the capacity to expand sufficiently in order to meet the needs of sick children in Ireland – and that children will die as a result.
These concerns are summed up by a complaint submitted to An Bord Pleanala by Prof Mark Redmond, Dept of Cardiothoracic Surgery and 14 other senior medical consultants, from Crumlin and Temple St, which read:
“We are unwilling to endorse a national children’s hospital on a site that cannot accommodate this truly critical adjacency. To do so would be to fail those infants whom we are entrusted to protect.”
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