Excerpt from section 5 , NCHA Submission to the Dolphin Group,in May 2012:-

“…We believe there are two choices in front of the government and political considerations will undoubtedly have a role in the ultimate determination.

The long term Strategy

This would place the NPH on a large accessible peripheral greenfield site which would not restict its size or configuration. A reconfiguration of maternity hospitals would transfer one of the existing facilities to the same site (Given the lesser cost of building on such a site, NCHA recommends that the option of building the maternity hospital at the same time as the children’s hospital be seriously considered). Later, the other components of an academic University Medical Centre, including an adult hospital, would join the site and the latter would gradually absorb all the national tertiary specialities currently spread around the city. This is the only way we will ever produce the adjacency of NPH with all the appropriate adult medical specialities as political, logistical and space constraints make their transfer to any single existing adult campus very unlikely, even if one were selected as the new home of the NPH . This plan, “The Long Term Strategy” would ultimately produce the best configuration but would require long term strategic vision and thinking by the DoH and government.

The short term Strategy

Too often, this has been the Irish strategy. This would place the NPH on an existing campus. While this would achieve some measure of co-location, we know that no existing campus delivers all the relevant synergies and that, even if it did, these synergies are less important to the functioning of the new hospital than adequate size, appropriate configuration and reasonable access. This makes point 1 above, Children First, the most important criterion in arriving at a conclusion.

Fundamentally, the NPH must be the right hospital for children – from the womb to young adulthood. That has sometimes been forgotten in this process. ” ENDS.

• Read the full NCHA Written Submission, which accompanied our oral presentation to the Dolphin Group, at the 2 May 2012 entry on the “Independent Review 2012” page of our website.