Plans for new Cork elective hospital advance with the publication of tenders

THE publication of tenders for design and cost control teams for Cork’s elective hospital has been welcomed.

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly announced yesterday that the HSE has issued a ‘request for tender’ for Phase 1 of the new elective hospitals set to be built in Cork and Galway.

This tender is for an architect-led design team to provide architectural, design, and engineering services and for a project control team to support the HSE to manage, control, and administer the design as well as the construction programme.

The HSE stated that it intends to have teams in place in the summer.

“I think it’s very welcome,” said Fine Gael minister of state at the Department of Health, Colm Burke.

“It will still take some time before they will be going in for planning, but the important thing now is that it’s the next step, and I think we need to now prioritise this issue.

“We’ve an increase in population in the Cork area and we need to make sure that people who require care can access care in a timely manner, but it’s also about making sure that for the doctors, the nurses, who want to provide the care, that they have adequate facilities in which to provide the very best of service,” the Cork North Central TD added.

Mr Burke said the scope of service at the new hospital, set to be delivered at the St Stephen’s Hospital site in Sarsfield Court, Glanmire, will first focus on day cases, diagnostics and outpatients, with the longer-term aim of expanding its remit.

“While this is going to be for day care initially, the long-term aim is to develop inpatient care as well in the elective hospital — that would be the second phase of the development,” he said.

“There’s also the argument as well that with the way medicine has gone so sub-specialised, there’s no reason why the Sarsfield Court couldn’t be an elective hospital for all of Munster – that a consultant would come down from Waterford or Clonmel or say Limerick or Kerry and spend the day there doing the operations that their expertise are in.”