BAM needs to urgently complete hot block at new children's hospital - Health Minister

Vivienne Clarke

Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has said the builder of the new children’s hospital BAM urgently needs to complete the “hot block” where surgeries and laboratories will be located.

Carroll MacNeill told RTÉ radio’s Today with David McCullagh show that she had visited the building on Tuesday, where she saw the ground floor, the lower ground floor and the sixth floor.

“What we really, really need is the hot block, which is where the surgeries are, where the laboratories are. That's the piece that we really need and that BAM should be giving us.”

The Minister also said she had been investigating the safest way in which sick children could be transported from hospitals such as Crumlin and Temple Street to the new children’s hospital.

There had been a theory that such a move could not be made during wintertime, she said. “We're testing that, we're looking at other examples of where that has been able to happen.

“You have to get the exact right time to do that. And it's contingent on lots of different factors.

“How many people take up the flu vaccine next year impacts whether we can do this because it impacts on what the presentation of flu is in our hospitals, including our adult hospitals. That means how many ambulances are available to us. All of these things work together," she said.

“Those factors impact on our ability or the availability of ambulances, the availability of staff in hospitals to be able to do this move safely. So we will push it as far as we safely can and we will make the correct assessment, I hope, at the right time. But it's contingent on a lot of different things like that.”

Carroll MacNeill said that Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) was now looking at examples of where such moves had been made during the winter.

“CHI are out testing that as well and observing that and looking at different places where that has happened and what would be the circumstances in which that could happen safely.

“We will only do what's safe to be done. But all of that is contingent on BAM giving us the hot block in the next number of weeks.”