Quit St James for Connolly

A HEALTH advocacy group called yesterday for an immediate halt to building the new Children’s Hospital at the St James’s site.

Connolly For Kids, an umbrella group of paediatricians, parents of sick children and previous patients, called for the construction of the hospital at the present site to cease as costs soar.

The group wants the children’s hospital to be built beside Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown, west Dublin, instead. Members of Connolly For Kids, who gathered at Leinster House yesterday, said the Connolly site offers unlimited space for expansion and easier access from across Ireland.

The group said there are serious infrastructural deficiencies in the hospital, claiming the Coombe Maternity Hospital relocation will not be able to fit at the St James’s site, ‘without which the lives of urgently ill neonatal babies will be needlessly lost in transit’.

Ex- medical director of the Emergency Department of Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital Crumlin Dr Róisín Healy said: ‘It won’t just cost billions, it will cost children their lives.’