Plans for new Cork hospital to be submitted soon

Plans for the long-awaited new Cork hospital will be submitted in the coming months, the Department of Health has said.

An issue with road access has been resolved, meaning plans can now progress on the elective hospital in Glanmire, which will focus exclusively on scheduled care, in an effort to reduce waiting lists and separate planned procedures from emergency ones.

The project was formally approved for the planning phase by the Government in December 2022. In the HSE’s 2026 Capital Plan, an allocation of €2.2m was awarded for the hospital to take it to design feasibility stage.

The Echo revealed last November that plans were delayed due to issues with road infrastructure access to the site.

Fine Gael TD Colm Burke had raised the hospital project at a recent meeting of the Oireachtas health committee. In response, health minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said the difficulties in relation to planning, which had been rooted in Cork County Council, as regards the connecting road, are now resolved.

No rowing back 

Derek Tierney, the department’s assistant secretary for health infrastructure, added: “There is no rowing back on our commitment to the elective treatment centre in Cork. As was committed to, we will get the planning application by the middle of the year.”

Mr Burke asked why the planning application could not be brought forward if the issue with the council had been resolved, and Mr Tierney said that the department still has to complete a design.

Mr Burke pointed out that the issue has been in discussions for nearly five years, saying that the development will take at least another year from planning permission being applied for.

Ms Carroll MacNeill added that both local authorities were involved in the plans, given their location in Glanmire, near the city border.

“I am sure that because Cork City Council and Cork County Council have been so seized of these issues for so long and the connected road issue that seems to have blocked the progression of planning, both local authorities will put their best resources together to expedite, as best they can, the appropriate consideration of this planning application, because we are keen to go ahead,” she said.