Adult interests trump Children’s.

  • Excerpt from the McKinsey Report, February 2006

“International experience shows that it is important to weigh a decision to co-locate [with an adult hospital] against pragmatic considerations including space and quality of access .”

  • Excerpts  from HSE website, March 2006

  7th March 2006,  “HSE Refutes Criticism of Process to Select New Children’s Hospital Site”
“The outcome process [ by the Task Group on the Location of the children’s Hospital] has not been predetermined…..It is open and objective to the point where the outcome may even be a decision to locate somewhere other than an existing hospital site.…Any suggestion that this group has prejudged anything is completely misplaced”.

However, a further post three weeks later, 29th March 2006, on the same website is as follows ’Regarding Site of Proposed National Children’s Hospital”: – “This process is to recommend only where the hospital is to be sited….The prime consideration is [sic] making this decision on site location will depend on co- location to an adult teaching academic hospital and adult national centres of treatment”. The earlier post of the 7th March is removed.

NCHA asks – What happened in  those three weeks of March 2006? Children  or adult institutions first ? And now, ten years later in 2016,  we ask the same question.