Brendan Kinsley, Stephanie Ryan and Sam Coulter-Smith on Mater site

[Letter to Examiner >]

We write to you as a group of hospital consultants working in close collaboration across the Mater, Temple St, and Rotunda Hospitals, on the pressing national issue regarding where to locate the long and urgently awaited new Children’s Hospital.

We want your readers to understand the reasons behind our long-held view that the Mater site will deliver one of the best children’s hospitals in the world and a whole new standard of care for the sick children of Ireland.

Firstly, we believe that tri-location (delivering true adjacency between an adult, children’s, and maternity hospital on the same site) will provide the best and safest care for mothers, children, and babies of Ireland and that no other option should be considered.

Secondly, we believe that the Mater is the only site that will deliver true tri-location on a single state-of-the art campus in the most timely and cost-effective manner.

Moreover, the Mater has recently opened a brand new state-of-the-art hospital. This newest, greenest, and most technology-enabled hospital in the country has been designed so that it can be built back-to-back with the new Children’s Hospital. &

The new maternity hospital will also be designed to have critical links with the Children’s Hospital and the adult hospital so that sick babies and mothers can be quickly and easily transferred. This will make it so much easier for hospital consultants like us and our colleagues in the allied healthcare professions to co-ordinate the treatment and care of mothers and children. It will also ensure that mothers in the adjacent maternity and adult hospitals can easily visit their sick children while both are in-patients.

The new Children’s Hospital on the Mater site will be delivered by 2016. There are no acquisition costs associated with the Mater site.

The new Children’s Hospital can be delivered at a net cost to the Exchequer which is significantly lower than any other costs reported on to date on any other sites that propose to deliver tri-location.

The Mater site will deliver on time and on budget a state-of-the-art medical campus that will look after Ireland’s babies, children, young people, expectant mothers, adults, and our older generations at all stages of the healthcare journey.

Professor Brendan Kinsley,
Chairperson, Medical Board and Consultant Endocrinologist, Mater Hospital;

Dr Stephanie Ryan,
Chairperson, Medical Board and Consultant Radiologist, Children’s University Hospital, Temple Street, Dublin;

Dr Sam Coulter-Smith,
Master and CEO and Consultant, Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, Rotunda Hospital, Dublin.