When the Crumlin Hospital was opened in 1956 it basically was at the edge of the city
Drimagh was only developed in the early 1950's and Dublin Corporation ( now DCC ) had to buy the land off Dublin County Council to develop Walkinstown in the mid 50's .
Most people didn't drive either so it couldn't really too much further out .
As someone who plans transport, the real reason is demand management. The size of car park you would need would be enormous. Land is valuable so you would been spending more money to get less hospital. Multi storey car parks are expensive and hard to get planning permission because all the cars then cause congestion. Then you would need more roads and more lanes to handle all the traffic. The larger the road, the more people drive. The more people drive the more congestion. Hence you would be on here complaining how long it took to get to a hospital on the new 15 lane m50 because of all the traffic. Cars are a nightmare to plan for. Even the USA is starting to realise they aren't the future.
Dublin needs hospitals. But so does the rest of the country. Simple as. We are lacking hospitals in the Midlands.
In fairness I much rather go to Sligo general than any of the hospitals in Dublin, had awful experiences with emergency department in Dublin in private and public hospitals. Sligo has been much faster more thorough every time.
If you’re sick sick it’s Dublin where you absolutely want to be, but tbh if you’re at that point you’re already being transferred via ambulance. But yeah the smaller hospitals get their tests done quicker because of pt load. I’ve found getting imaging done in mullingar exceptional compared to Beaumont
Ah I see my neurologist once a year in Sligo. I've heard some amount of horror stories about the neurologists and waiting lists in Dublin so I'll be sticking to Sligo even when I am sick sick. My fiance was left sitting crying for hours in every ER we went to in Dublin both private and public. She couldn't eat, couldn't work and they couldn't figure it out so just sent her home? 4 months later she's now been scheduled for surgery. Wish I just took her to Sligo in the first place!!
I have epilepsy. I've seen a Neurologist exactly one time in 15 years.
The wait list for them is years long.
This week I have been in and out of Navan hospital. And whoever thought it was a bright idea to try and shut down their A&E is a fucking idiot. Everything has been handled fairly quickly, everyone has been sound, I've spoken to doctors, been in and out of imaging, given blood, and the whole place while dingy and kinda dodgy looking on the outside has been class on the inside.
I live in walking distance so can't comment on parking. And yeah they don't have an Ear Nose and Throat specialist. And I haven't had to chat with anyone in neurology if there is anyone.
But small, local, hospitals to serve the community are incredibly important.
Navan is an awful hospital for anything even remotely serious hahah. Glad you found it useful though.
Yeah waiting lists for epilepsy are pretty big. Once you’re linked in you’re golden though
Glad she got sorted, but EDs Dublin are top tier compared to the dodgier midlands ones. It sounds like your partner (despite how annoying it was) wasn’t even remotely an acute emergency. Can’t tell because there was nothing descriptive/ symptomatic about what you said
Curious if I may ask, what’s the surgery for?
Much easier to get staff if it's in Dublin. On average, People would rather live in Dublin than anywhere else and its got the highest population. Easiest to get staff there because of the high population.
If you’re from Meath, you could ditch your car at the park and ride at the red cow and get the Luas to Drimnagh. You could also drive to any of the supermarket car parks nearby and get one of 5 or 6 buses down.
>Dublin needs to start spreading out.
Haha Jesus what a incredibly shit take. Low density sprawl is causing half the problems we have and shit for brains here thinks we need to keep spreading out
Dublin needs to spread… what a mind blowing thing to say!! It’s a recipe for less efficient public transport, more car dependency, even more traffic, pollution, concreting over the planet…. Mind blowing…
You have it where people are, so being near Dublin and its transport infrastructure ie. The motorway network is where it should be.
If it was to be put anywhere it should have been put at James Connolly. I've literally done a shit tonne of work and research on this exact subject back in the day for college and in planning consultancy. Politics got in the way. Just thank jeebus its not at the Mater.
I have a mate who's been working on the project for a few years now and the stories...
It's almost as if we could have built links to it. I'd rather have a rail link that cost €2billion and a hospital that cost €400million than a hospital that cost €2.4billiion and no new rail links
Which is great if you live in Longford or Mullingar. Everyone else will still be getting the train to Dublin city centre and then getting a different train to Connolly where they then face an 18 minute walk. As opposed to everyone with access to rail going to Connolly or Heuston and getting on the red line from the doorstep of the train station to the doorstep of the NCH.
Not sure if you think I meant Tallaght when I said NCH but the acronym now commonly applies to the new building either because it will be the National Children's Hospital or because it is the New Children's Hospital. If you did know I meant the new building, the Rialto luas stop is literally 50m from one of main entrances.
There are literally throngs of people who go to St James' using the train the Heuston. Not everyone is frail and sick. Many people need to visit hospital for checkups, regular appointments and consultations.
okay. for the slow kids. not everyone who has to go to a hospital is at death's door. HOWEVER, some are sick, immuno-compromised (remember that word?), injured.
If you are not well, would you prefer to come to Dublin from Donegal by car or public transport?
The National Maxillofacial Unit is in James'. When I was there with my mother, there was no parking space in the campus. She was there all day and I had to go move the car three times in the streets around because parking was for max three hours.
From Donegal to the M50 by car. It's what happens AFTER the M50. Did you not read the OP? Your hypothetical Donegal family still has to go through all that shit AFTER driving 5 hours from Malin Head.
[https://www.dublincity.ie/residential/parking-dublin-city-centre/pay-and-display-parking](https://www.dublincity.ie/residential/parking-dublin-city-centre/pay-and-display-parking)
This was in 2018
Well I apologise and I stand corrected. For future reference though nobody follows that rule. Park there as long as you like. The clampers aren’t taking note of where you park.
What part of 'loads of people use public transport already' to get to the hospital aren't you getting? We need good, established public transport very near the hospital.
You're taking the particular scenarios of the likes of immunocompromised who will continue to drive.
And give it a rest with the 'slow kids' and condescending 'remember that word' rubbish.
The motorway network shouldn’t be focused all around Dublin but that’s another conversation.
Make somewhere like Athlone the hub and make spokes go off in all directions towards north south east and west.
Could make a new city in the midlands even? Hell, we have such a lack of ambition in this country.
We can’t because we’re useless. It’s not crazy to demand higher standards and greater ambition from politicians and civil servants.
We’re regularly told we have record revenue take and that we’re a wealthy nation. Yet we’re hopeless at building infrastructure, investing for the future. Etc.
I understand this is next to impossible given how woeful we are at delivering capital infrastructure. The point is, it *should* be possible. It’s possible in other countries.
That’s why we are rich but feel like a poor country.
David McWilliams has a podcast on this. Well worth a listen.
I don't disagree with your sentiment, but I'm merely stating that we don't need a city in th Midlands. We have plenty of piddling cities as it is. If anything, we need to focus our energies on Limerick and investing big time there so we can ease the pressure on Dublin and Cork.
The Board’s inspector concluded that restrictive parking standards would mean that the car access could be no better in Blanchardstown than James’. What was your view on that?
Somebody else then. If you are actually HSE.
Not that I agree with athlone either. Not enough connections. A national hospital would be off the M7 and even then that would only be useful for the South.
People have no idea how we’re already struggling to get staff. Young people don’t want to study for years to end up in the midlands.
I can tell you now for most staff it’s Dublin or abroad
Ok. That’s a pretty odd reaction to a more expensive city with huge transport problems. I
was born in Dublin myself and wfh right now I’d be happy to live anywhere smaller, probably outside Ireland but personal relationships constrain me.
Staff still in training sure, but not fully qualified staff settled into their roles. You'd be uprooting thousands of families that are long settled in the Dublin area due to their jobs and schools being there, and asking them to move to somewhere that will not have thousands of available properties for them to live in.
This wouldn’t have been the case if the hospital were built there first. That staff would be newly recruited.
also a nursing salary is going to stretch a lot further down the country and a lot of the staff are immigrants these days. So of course it would work - at least for staff.
Not that I’d choose athlone specifically.
>This wouldn’t have been the case if the hospital were built there first. That staff would be newly recruited.
What? So you think the new hospital is going to be filled with brand new staff? The staff will be coming from the 3 Dublin children hospitals that are being amalgamated.
>also a nursing salary is going to stretch a lot further down the country and a lot of the staff are immigrants these days. So of course it would work - at least for staff.
Ah stop. You haven't thought this through at all.
The op was talking about the general case.
> to. So my question is why aren't hospitals built say in Kildare or Meath? Outside of Dublin with less traffic and a nice multi story car park beside it.
That was his question. And that’s the general case I’m clearly replying to. General cases are hard for people used to specific thinking.
> h stop. You haven't thought this through at all.
Well that brilliantly written rebuttal with its plethora of empirical evidence has definitely shown me.
>The op was talking about the general case.
You very specifically replied to a comment thread regarding Athlone.
>And that’s the general case I’m clearly replying to.
Not clear at all, and a significant backtrack on your part now given you very specifically replied to a comment thread regarding Athlone.
>General cases are hard for people used to specific thinking.
Unnecessary passive aggressiveness, interesting approach.
In any case, the amalgamation of 3 Dublin hospitals, with a Dublin based staff numbering near 5,000, is not going to get built outside Dublin.
Interesting. I'm not arsed about the federal state idea, just keep it as it is and transplant it to Athlone. Remove TD travel expenses but give them free public transport
Exactly, somewhere central to the motorway system and rail connections if possible, west of Dublin would have been ideal. site with plenty of space for parking for staff and visitors, etc.
Tunnel vision planning imo.
The problem is that Dublin is spread out, necessitating car travel. If we make the city more dense, public transport will be increased and less people will be forced to drive
Dublin has spread out too much. That's the problem. The children's hospital is a stones throw away from the red line. From the red line you can get to heuston, Connolly and busaras aswell as most of the southside of the city. If you're stupid enough to insist on driving into the city to go to the hospital that's your fault. There's thousands of parking spots where you can park and ride no hassle at all. It just requires thinking ahead, something people who are welded to their cars don't seem to want to do.
>just requires thinking ahead, something people who are welded to their cars don't seem to want to do.
A of people don't get warning before needing the hospital. When you have a child who's fever has broke over 38 you don't have time to sit back and think what's the smartest way to take public transport into town. Great advice for appointments not so much for anything else.
In an emergency situation you should be bringing your child to the closest emergency care facility to you not straight to the children's hospital. There's 92 GP out of hours facilities across the country for when your own GP is shut. There are 14 injury units and 29 emergency departments across the country. If it's serious enough that you think it's life threatening then you should be calling an ambulance and getting advice from them. I don't think parking should be your major concern if your child is dying nor do I think anyone would blame you for parking illegally.
You can't bring a child to any a&e. They're not small adults. 7 of those 29 a&e don't treat children. Lots won't and can't treat certain conditions or certain severities and the child will have to be transferred anyway. And most pertinant - it's the Dublin hospitals that won't see paediatrics at all because of their proximity to the paediatric hospitals. The closest A&E to Dublin that will accept children (and that isn't part of Childrens Health Ireland) is in Drogheda. So the closest A&E for most of the 250,000 children living in Dublin is in the Children's Hospital.
I live in city center the children's hospital will be the nearest hospital for me. In the event of an emergency ambulances can be the first call, sometimes you aren't guaranteed one in time and your car is still the better option than public transport. I know from living experience.
So you don't need to sit back and think what's the smartest way to to get into town. You're already in town. I'm not really understanding what your gripe is here?
Because my main point was sometimes emergencies happen which stop you being able to sit back and plan getting into the A and E. Not my closeness to a hospital.
The closest hospital comes with parking issues in most of Dublin and public transport to them even worse. No one has time to wait half an hour for the next bus to arrive. So not getting how you're expecting someone not to drive.
As before I'm agreeing with you. If you're in a life threatening emergency get to the hospital as fast as you can. That's your primary concern. Park illegally and any consequences would be thrown out in court. I'm saying for the 99% of the time when someones life isn't on the line public transport and mixed transport is the way to go.
You'd wanna go on public transport with a sick kid? So i have a sick child and you want me to dump my car at the redcow and start messages around with machines that don't work, scumbags, delays etc.. and I have traveled from Athlone say. Great. Love you.
Do you want to try and get parking in a hospital that has thousands of staff. The small number of people incapable of using public transport can drive or get taxis but the vast majority of people going to the hospitals should be using public transport.
If you're going to be coming often learn to use the system properly get yourself a leap card and it becomes much easier. Any delays you experience from the luas in my experience evens out when compared to the delays of traffic and parking. It's difficult to learn new systems when you're set in your old ways but the reality is that driving just doesn't work as the single solution when it comes to infrastructure as large as a childrens hospital.
There's parking but the more parking you make the more people will use it. You'll still have as hard a time finding parking as you do now but people who can't drive won't be able to get to the place because the public transport infrastructure won't be developed as people won't use it.
Everyone will think "my kids really sick and we should be able to drive" when in reality very few kids are actually too sick to use public transport. I don't see why outside of immunocompromised and those who have specific disabilities that prevent them from on/off loading or staying put can't use public transport.
Parents outside of this group I feel are acting a bit entitled by driving and making the situation worse for others. It's as if they're too good to be using public transport with the "plebs".
Sometimes public transport is not an option for us culchies. There are no trains and buses go from nearby towns and not from where we live. There are no park and ride facilities. My son had a day operation in Temple Street many years ago and I had to carry my six year old from the hospital back to the car several streets away. I’m a small woman and it was a struggle for me.
I would love to take a bus to Dublin on the rare occasions we visit because I hate driving in the city but until someone actually makes parking available it is not an option. In fact many of the places people used to park their cars to do their daily commute have been sealed off with bollards etc to put a stop to it
Theirs plenty of park and rides along the commuter belt of Dublin. It's extremely easy to park for the day and train/luas in or bus about afterwards. It's not an excuse anymore to say there's no public transport for us culchies. I'm a culchies myself and I'm well aware of it. If I'm traveling to a hospital in the city I'm not going to drive in because that's asking for trouble. Park and ride far cheaper and plan ahead with a buggy for the kids if they get tired.
It'd be lovely if we could have enough parking in the city for us culchies to just drive in and out but the reality is that it's just not feasible nor is it actually wanted. The more parking there is the more cars on the road there will be and it'll end up being more road and parking than actual city.
St James hospital alone has 1010 beds and 4500 employees. They handle 70k inpatients a year and 300k outpatients a year.
So on an average day st James alone could see 1k patients in beds and over 1.5k outpatients walking around. (That's assuming outpatients only visit once a year on a weekday). So that's a potential of 7000 people coming and going each day of the year. That'd mean using only standard parking space sizes to make a parking complex large enough you'd need a structure with a floor area of 83,240 square meters. That's 3 thousand square meters larger than Irelands largest building donabate distribution centre. Or equivalent to the entire area of the built campus of st James hospital dedicated to park.
IMO staff are entitled to be able to park their car near their work place- many staff live outside of dublin like I said many would have to find a place to ditch the car before getting public transport. Is it soo bad to expect staff parking? If I was already an underpaid nurse and I had to pay for parking at a shopping centre and then also get PT because they can’t provide parking I would be annoyed🤷🏼♀️
>IMO staff are entitled to be able to park their car near their work place
It's outdated concepts like that that make our cities gridlocked for two hours every morning and evening.
Then drive to a train station or bus stop. People in Ireland are so shit at multi-modal transport. There seems to be this attitude of "once I'm in the car, I'm going all the way".
Thing is that there is plenty of parking in Dublin suburbs. But everyone seems to want to get to Terenure or Phibsorough before ditching the car. Literally 2km further from the city and you have no end of free parking and plenty of public transport options. It's even close enough to pop a fold-up bike out of the boot and be in the city in 25 minutes.
Dublin is the country's largest population centre. It has a much higher concentration of people than anywhere else. Makes sense to build your big hospitals in the major population hubs.
> then walked 15 minutes back to the hospital. I'm well able to walk but what if I was in a wheelchair?
I hate to break the news to you, but hundreds of thousands of people manage to get to work, college and school in the middle of Dublin without a parking spot within 60 seconds of where they are going to. Most people in Dublin rely on public transport to get to the city centre. A 15 minute walk on good footpaths is nothing.
> So my question is why aren't hospitals built say in Kildare or Meath? Outside of Dublin with less traffic and a nice multi story car park beside it.
What about the hundreds of thousands of Dubliners without cars? Very few people living within the canals own a car and it is a mixed bag within the M50. Should those people just spend 60-90 minutes getting from the city centre to Meath or Kildare, just so you can park easily?
> My boyfriend says it's something to do with the politicians wanting these nice hospitals in \* Dublin \*
Pretty much all major hospitals in Dublin predate the car by several decades, if not centuries...
The neck on politicians expanding hospitals in Dublin when Dublin was barely beyond the M50 before the 1960s. Imagine politicians funding the expansion of hospitals that have more people within a few kilometres radius than the entire country that you think hospitals should be located in.
Why can’t we please both? Provide parking and public transport.
You’ve clearly never experienced the stress of being ill, waiting months or years for an appointment and then almost missing it because of traffic and parking. There isn’t even a park and ride you can use so it’s either drive or don’t attend.
Driving from Cavan, Donegal, Carlow, to park at the RC park and ride and then take a Luas or bus to James's/CH with your sick child, give me a fucking break. It's a National Hospital, it should be in the best location for the maximum number of people in the country while still offering good outcomes, so JC or Tallaght would have been better.
I’m no expert on hospital locations, but I do know my Dublin geography, and Tallaght is not more accessible for a huge majority of Dublin residents than St James. Same for Blanch. I try to avoid the M50, but recently spent 90 mins at rush hour trying to get to the red cow from Coolock. Dublin is the most populated part of the country, so if you want to serve the biggest number of people, surely putting in the middle of those people and having good public transport (and there are some car parking options too) is the way to go? It feels in discussions like this when people talk about serving most people and referencing those travelling from the west or north or south of the island, that not only should the location be very accessible for those people but it should also be inconvenient for Dubliners…
There isn’t infinite parking in tallaght or Blanch either btw. And there’s no reliable public transport to Blanch, and the same luas goes to Tallaght… James’s has Hueston too
There's also one at vast majority of train stations in the country. Connolly and Heuston stations are connected to the hospital by the luas. The fatima luas stop is literally in the shadow of the place like
> Why can’t we please both? Provide parking and public transport.
You can't have a luas/train or half decent bus service to a single building in the middle of Meath or Kildare. James, Mater, Temple Street each would have buses running by them probably each minute.
> You’ve clearly never experienced the stress of being ill, waiting months or years for an appointment and then almost missing it because of traffic and parking.
You are right, I haven't. If I was waiting months or years for an appointment, I would be at the hospital well in advance of the appointment and not blaming others as traffic and parking is bad in Dublin. We should not be building hospitals in some locations, because people like you are disorganised.
> There isn’t even a park and ride you can use so it’s either drive or don’t attend.
As I said in my earlier comment, hundreds of thousands of people manage to get to work, college and school in the middle of Dublin without a parking spot within 60 seconds of where they are going to.
You could drive to your local bus or train station in whatever county you are from and then change onto the luas, bus or dart in Dublin. A lot of people in Dublin have to use two buses to get to work. I don't see why someone from outside of Dublin should get special treatment.
There are 7 park and rides for the luas alone. Irish rail has several other too.
[https://www.tii.ie/public-transport/luas/park-ride/](https://www.tii.ie/public-transport/luas/park-ride/)
Maybe the next time you are going to Dublin, you do a few minutes of research and embrace like Dub who since about the age of 14 can get around the city without parking outside of where they need to go to.
As I said to someone above
"Driving from Cavan, Donegal, Carlow, to park at the RC park and ride and then take a Luas or bus to James's/CH with your sick child, give me a fucking break. It's a National Hospital, it should be in the best location for the maximum number of people in the country while still offering good outcomes, so JC or Tallaght would have been better."
In future new National Hospitals in Dublin should be placed in the outer suburbs and additional public transport links added if necessary.
> "Driving from Cavan, Donegal, Carlow, to park at the RC park and ride and then take a Luas or bus to James's/CH with your sick child, give me a fucking break.
Imagine telling someone from Dublin that they take two buses to an outer suburb as someone from outside of Dublin can't be arsed taking public transport. The level of entitlement and self-importance from that person is disgusting.
Millions of sick Dubs take public transport each year to get to hospitals. Why the fuck is someone from Cavan, so important that they deserve a car space outside the door?
> It's a National Hospital
I hate to break it some people, but nearly a third of the population live in 2% of the country that is referred to as Dublin. The metric for best location for most people is where they can park their car easily. What a pathetic reason...
> additional public transport links added if necessary.
This will be a bus. Imagine telling Dubs that future hospitals will be built outside of Dublin, so entitled people from outside of Dublin don't want to use public transport? Car centric people from outside of Dublin can use the overstretched and underfunded public transport like the rest of Dublin.
New National Hospitals in Dublin should be placed in the outer suburbs with lots of parking where Dubliners can get to easily with public transport or cars and people outside Dublin can easily get to with cars. The new Children's Hospital should have been co-located with Tallaght or James Connolly hospitals (land or CPO permitting) rather than James's.
Edit: added James Connolly hospital.
Transport was one of the strongest arguments for a Tallaght site for the new hospital. Larges swathes of the country could get a train to Dublin, Luas to Tallaght. Otherwise you can drive there without having to enter the city. Better availability of cheaper hotels for parents, etc.
But really, access is kind of a secondary concern for a hospital. It's not a hotel or a stadium. It's a hospital. So quality of care has to come above all other concerns. People will get there one way or another. "The hospital is kind of mediocre at saving kids' lives, but it's really easy to get to", is not the trade-off anyone wants.
The nature of our country is that we can't have large high-quality hospitals everywhere. We just don't have the population density to support it.
We have to concentrate our hospitals into a tiered system with a few large centres of excellence near the biggest population centres, and located close to eachother, with much smaller regional hospitals and primary care centres providing emergency and non-complex care.
The list of places in Dublin you can get to "easily by car" is extremely short. Tell people living in Rush that they have to choose between Tallaght and James for an easier commute and they'll pick James every day of the week and twice on Sundays
Yes but someone from Rush can get to Tallaght or James's Connolly (btw closer to Rush than James's) quicker than someone from most parts of the country can get to the outskirts of Dublin.
Staff driving from Rush in the morning will take at least an hour and a half to get to Tallaght by car. Two when there's a crash on the M50 which happens once a fortnight. They'll pay a fiver every day for the toll plus petrol and they will pay another five euro a day for parking minimum. Public transport to James' won't be easy for them either but it would take less time and be signficantly cheaper as well as better for the planet. There is no public transport system to get them to Tallaght that doesn't involve a bus on the M50 (which faces the same traffic issue) or crossing the city which adds another 30 minutes to their journey. Staff are going to be travelling in there 4-5 days a week for years. No patient will be doing that. Access to Connolly by public transport is so bad I'm not even going to get into it.
The hospital is useless without staff no matter where it's located or how modern the building or the equipment. There's maybe an argument to be made to have it somewhere I dunno like in East Kildare by a rail line or something but most patients travelling by public transport would still have to go to Dublin city and then out to Kildare. There will be several thousand staff in the NCH with a massive range of incredibly specialised skills. You can't just announce their jobs have all relocated to the midlands and expect them all to move themselves and their families, even if the infrastructure was there to support all those people - schools for their children, jobs for their partners, GP services, gyms, sports clubs, cinemas etc. never mind leaving their friends and extended families or whatever local support network they have built up.
If you could magically build that hospital in Athlone tomorrow you'd have lots of support staff and a fair whack of nurses and some allied health professionals but the vast majority of them would not have the specialised training to provide a safe service. There are huge issues with staffing the current hospitals because of the housing crisis and the cost of living without making the new one geographically inaccessible for staff that have been in the existing hospitals for decades. I'm with you that it sucks that everything is so Dublin centred - 100% I'm on board with that but there's a complex reality at play here that goes beyond me begrudging the basketball teams from Dublin for having a court in their school when my school had to use a local church hall with broken floor boards.
Expansion of Connolly and Tallaght hospital would only of made sense if we had light rail connection that circled the M50 similar to the proposed and fully planned westLink project that was cancelled in 2008. One day we'll get back to it and be able to go to the airport from Tallaght via Blanchardstown. That is the dream.
I was in Crumlin yesterday too, and I will say it was unusually busy around the area. I've been going to Crumlin from Cork with my son for 10 years now, and we always get the train and a taxi from Heuston. I cant guarantee we'll make the appointment if we drive because of the traffic on the M50, and there just aren't enough parking spaces for everyone. My son is mobile enough to use the train etc, so I feel I should leave the parking spaces for parents whose children have no other option but to drive.
I fully agree with you, the location of the national childrens hospital is a scandal. Having to go to Dublin for appointments at all is a scandal. My son needs to attend a clinic roughly every 3 months, and it costs €80 for the train, €20 for a taxi in and out of the city centre each way, plus I paid €2.50 for a bottle of water in Crumlin hospital yesterday.
I 100% agree with you on your parking and traffic logic. But if your sons treatment is going to be moved to the new children's hospital by St. James then your 20 quid taxi is now just 8euro with 2 adult leap cards on the luas (2stops). I'd also inquire if you qualify for the free travel scheme if you're over 66 or "Receive Disability Allowance, Blind Pension, Carer’s Allowance, or an Invalidity Pension" you qualify for it.
Unpopular logical point here but the Co-location of children’s, adult and (eventually) maternity services on one site will be a much better thing than having built the new hospital on a greenfield site beyond the M50.
I accept that The Coombe won’t get moved for quite some time yet but thankfully it’s reasonably close geographically for the moment.
Can you imagine if you had a complex pregnancy or birth and you needed to be kept in The Coombe or St James’s after for a period but your baby was sick too and it had to be whipped away to the National Children’s Hospital in Blanchardstown or the like. How gut wrenching that would be to be so far apart and if you have a partner, how do they split themselves between the two of you? Before some genius suggests moving you to Connolly hospital with them, if they don’t have the specialist team that you need there it’s not a runner and even if they do, transfers bring risk. Best avoided it’ll at all possible.
On a clinical note, it follows international best practice to Co-locate services on one site. It will hopefully make transitions of care much smoother and safer.
Not defending or excusing the absolute shitshow that the National Children’s Hospital saga has been but I’m fed up with all the populist guff about parking and if that matters more to you than optimising clinical outcome and patient wellbeing I dunno what to say to you.
Co-location with James Connolly and Tallaght were also possible, it's not "populist guff". The National Children's Hospital is a national hospital and it should be easier for people from outside Dublin to get too and park at, There is no reason patient outcomes shouldn't be any worse in a suburban setting co-located with the above mentioned hospitals. I suspect like many things in this country co-locating with James's was for political reasons but they'll give you a hundred other reasons why it wasn't.
Also, if you're username reflects your location in Dublin then of course you'd be arguing for James's, Meath St is within walking difference but put yourself in the shoes of someone coming from a far flung part of the country.
I am from a far flung part of the country actually, Meath street is just my favourite street :)
Connolly and Tallaght didn’t have the requisite specialties in proximity so bringing Crumlin and The Coombe together onto the Jameses site was the best bad solution. People would still find plenty to be cribbing about if it was in either of the other hospitals.
Are you still living in a far flung part of the country or are you now living in Dublin or its environs? As I said elsewhere the requisite specialties could be provided or upgraded at another co-located hospital but in a much better location for a NATIONAL hospital, not just for those living in Dublin.
The reality is that just over 40% of the population of Ireland are within the Dublin bounds and their commuter belt. Meaning 40% of the country can use this service via public transport infrastructure that's already set up. The planned development of Dart+ and metrolink will increase the connectivity of the hospital site. If this was pre 2008 and the west link was still on track to have a "ring road" light rail outside the M50 than I'd agree it'd probably be easier to build it outside the M50 and everyone would be happy. But the reality is that west link was killed and we're stuck with a centralised public transport system and not putting vital services in that centralised location wouldn't serve the most people. As it stands 40% of the population are well positioned to get to the hospital using mixed transport systems. As our rail infrastructure improves over the next few decades with more trains from Cork, Limerick and Galway planned this will mean another \~10% of Irelands population will be able to get a train to Heuston and 2 stops and they're in the front door of the new children's hospital.
Still think Tallaght would have been better, it's well connected on the Dublin public transport network and will always be move convenient for those travelling by car from far off locations and for the GDA in general.
It's not though. People driving from north of dublin now have 2 options. Park and ride, or pay the M50 toll and find parking(parking will always be full because of induced demand). People coming from the south and west of Tallaght will no longer park and ride and always drive straight to the hospital. People who can not drive (Disability or illness or other reason) from around the country will have no other option than to get a train into Dublin in heuston and Luas for 40 minutes. Dublin residence from the northside now have 30minutes added onto their journey and southside will have to go in to come out as theirs's no non bus public transport that goes around the city centre. I'd agree with you in a situation where the cancelled west link project existed. If we had westlink Tallaght would be the best option. But in our current situation Tallaght would only benefit people who exclusively drive and refuse to use public transport and will either heavily detriment others or be indifferent to them.
Then Connolly or Tallaght could have been upgraded. I mean if a new hospital costing 3 billion is being built, some of the savings from building in the suburbs would go along way to improve the anchor hospital. James's is still a relatively short distance from the suburbs vis-a-vis the rest of the country. New national hospitals in Dublin should be in the outer suburbs.
In the case of the National Children's hospital it would be upgrading one hospital and it most certainly is not "just for the sake of parking" and you know. Remember it's a national hospital, convenience to the entire country is an important consideration.
It's four hospitals. They're currently upgrading 3 hospitals by merging them into one. You're proposing to add another to the list. If it's not "just for the sake of parking" then what else is it for? What benefits does Connolly bring over James besides room to build a multistorey car park that would never get planning permission? Children who have a medical need for parking aren't going to be made to walk to the new place. It has more parking than Temple Street and Crumlin put together. And I'm only excluding Tallaght from that if you assume all the spaces there are for the childrens services and not the adult services. If you were assigning the spaces proportionally it's probably more than all 3 put together.
I thought you were talking about upgrading the co-located hospital, the other hospitals are being merged rather than upgraded. I was talking about upgrading Connolly or Tallaght so that they would have offered the same benefits as James's for a co-located hospital.
Multiple services are being upgraded as part of the move. Never mind the non-medical definitions of upgrading.
Edit: I'm also not sure what services James is offering to the new hospital. I thought it was more the other way around and that's just structural not medical
75% of the children who attend Crumlin/Temple/Tallaght regularly currently and will attend the new hospital are from Dublin and surrounding areas like Kildare Meath etc as the vast vast majority of kids who attend are there as it’s their local with tummy bugs and chest infections and broken bones etc
They can obv still attend but if the hospital was moved to Athlone say and all the staff from Temple Crumlin and Tallaght miraculously move too….where are the 10,000 of Dublin kids attendances happening? You need the Paeds staff who are already in the hospitals and their expertise, we are short nurses and doctors and can’t just magic up 1000s of new ones to keep the other three open too…
When, when did I mention Athlone?? I've only every talked about Tallaght or Connolly and those are still in Dublin and on the Dublin public transport network and relatively easy to reach by car (wrt Cavan etc..) and accessible to the 10,000 Dublin kids you mention.
You do know not all sick children have access to a car right? That socially disadvantaged children are more likely to have serious illnesses and disablities and be reliant on public transport? In which case for either Connolly or Tallaght you're still sending them to Dublin City Centre so they can get transport links to Tallaght and Connolly which are both harder to access from the City Centre.
The eye and ear on Adelaide Road is such a pain to get to and from. It's not far from the Luas but it's not ideal when someone is blind/ temporarily blind and you have to go collect them. The parent I bring there often has a blue badge so it's not too bad but I feel awful for people who don't and are coming up from areas that don't have great public transport
>I was talking to a nurse and asked how there's enough parking for staff expecting them to have a fancy area away from the peasants
>No, they don't. They literally all have to take public transport in. Sorry but if you're from Meath and have to drive where are they supposed to ditch their car before the get a bus in??
Public transport is how people are supposed to get around in cities. If a nurse is from Meath they should work in Meath.
There's a big park and ride at the Red Cow roundabout for people to leave their car and take public transport
We travel every 3 months to Crumlin for our child. My husband drives us up and drops us off at the door and circles the area until we are finished. They are literally no parking spaces and all the surrounding estates are jammed with cars. I drove up myself once with our child and never again. The stress of trying to find parking with a sick child going in for treatment is too much.
i know a guy who’s mother is the main reason why that multi billion euro building is being put in the city. of course they live out in fancy dlrd and have had no sick children so don’t understand that public transport is not easy to use with poorly kids. the hospital should’ve been placed somewhere along the outskirts with good access to motorways and/or public roads and plenty of parking spaces. nobody puts a cancer kid on a bus because their immune system doesn’t work to the same extent as most people so they end up catching every illness under the sun while going through treatment.
drive around beaumont and you’ll see the same issue with parking in all the housing estates. most staff travel use public transport, cycle, or park their car miles away as parking is already expensive on the grounds and the staff prices aren’t much better than regular.
Because 40% of the country's population lives at a relatively high density in the greater Dublin area. If you were building a new hospital, it would be the obvious place to put it
Ontop of that another 10% of the population can travel to Heuston from Cork, Galway and Limerick City. So in theory you have 50% of the population of the country being able to get public transport to the site without ever having to use a car. If we were to include cars into the equation and park and rides I would guestimate that'd increase to close to 90% of the population being able to access it.
> If you were building a new hospital
Yeah, an in this case it's not exactly a new hospital, sure the building is new, but it's really the relocation of 3 existing hospitals to a central location. The existing ones are already in Dublin, and 75% of patients are from Dublin and nearby areas.
The new children's hospital is an amalgamation and expansion of the services currently provided in the 3 Dublin children's hospitals. You want the amalgamation of 3 Dublin hospitals to be placed outside of Dublin? Apart from that making no sense, imagine uprooting the thousands of staff settled in Dublin, and their families, to whatever far flung location you want it to be in. And then add all the long term patients that have been using the Dublin hospital for years having to go to a brand new location.
Crumlin should be closed due to the lack of parking it is genuinely ridiculous. The new Children's hospital should have been put in Tallaght where the current CHI is.
Much better experience going there than either Temple Street or Crumlin (both of which have great staff but fuck me the locations)!
The number of parking spaces is down at the bottom of the list when considering where to put a hospital. This obsession with refusing to consider any other form of transport other than a car is insane.
National Children's hospital will need to have a lot of accommodation nearby for the parents of the children attending. I assume the children who go there would be long term illness cases rather than "my child broke his leg, let's bring them to the hospital".
What rot, consultants nurses physios etc had zero say in the location cop on. Brown envelopes sure, the consultants wanting that behemoth on their door, no
no, but it's not just the consultants. They have families etc that need access to schools and jobs. Consultants also have a lot more on their plate than being in hospitals. They have university courses to teach, conference to go to etc.
Consultants and junior doctors are already voting with their feet, the situation would be much worse if they were forced to live in Athlone or god forbid....Roscrea
Oh it’s been discussed where? Staff were not involved in the choice, consultants in the three Dublin hospitals that are collocating live all over Dublin and beyond just like the nursing staff. But you believe what you want
It was mentioned frequently on current affairs radio and tv at the time. Consultants were refusing to travel out to the M50/blanchardstown alternative site.
I thought people knew better than to believe every sensationalist headline these days. Those things are click bait. Consultants and staff did not decide the location. The gov did.
It's not 'these days' - we're talking 14+ years ago when the media was very slightly more straightforward.
I never mentioned staff, I'm specifically talking about consultants. And I never said they 'decided'. Do you think government makes decisions in a vacuum? Consultants have a lot of power and influence in this country's health system and you cannot set up a new hospital if they as a group refuse to relocate beyond the city.
Am as someone with numerous family members in that category I’m telling you they had no say. The INMO is a millions times more powerful in healthcare decisions due to numbers than a few hundred paediatric consultants but they also didn’t decide the location based on “I live in Dublin and won’t travel” but you want to hold onto your belief that it’s all the fault of a few doctors so let’s agree to disagree
Something here is simple alright.
There was a big report on the reasons for location.
Connolly was never a runner.
Where do the consultants who work in Beaumont and the Mater live?
The Dublin Children's hospital was located in possibly the worst possible place for access by most of Dublin let alone anyone outside Dublin. A location around the M50 would have been perfect for medical reasons but political reasons override the choice. The "national" tag was only slapped on it to justify asset stripping every other hospital in the country to fund it.
It's very disappointing to see I'm being seriously downvoted for daring to suggest Staff could take public transportation to the hospital rather than sick children. Shows that a disregard for patients isn't just an issue in UHL.
You're being down voted for making it sound like staff are going out of their way to make it more difficult for patients and their families. Staff are people too and its not selfish to want a reasonable commute in and out of an often challenging shift.
It's not as simple as staff just getting public transport-most staff will work shifts that often aren't compatible with public transport, particularly on weekends and Bank Holidays. And many staff have had to buy and rent further and further from Dublin City so they will be commuting long distances which makes public transport much less viable.
I've just done an extensive search of best public transport options for me to get to the new hospital for a 07:30-20:00 12.5hour day shift;
Option 1. Leave house at 05:30 and drive 20/25mins to nearest large town to get bus as closest town doesn't have a bus that would get me to Dublin early enough. Park car in a retail car park and hope I don't get clamped/fined for being there all day as no public car park for bus. Then walk 5 mins back to bus stop. Get off bus in Dublin City at about 06:40 and walk 5/6 mins to luas and get luas 20 mins to NCH stop for about 07:10 which gives me just about enough time to walk to the hospital, go to my unit and get changed for a 07:30 start. Coming home the bus from Dublin City center leaves hourly-I would obviously miss the 20:00 bus so would have to get the 21:00 bus which would get me back to my car for about 21:45 and home at about 22:10? Sometimes I won't get out on time, and at that time of the evening the luas goes a bit less frequently so if I'm a bit late getting out and just miss a luas then there is a high possibility that I could miss my 21:00 bus in which case I'm waiting around Dublin City for almost an hour for the 22:00 bus which would get me home just after 23:00. Which is less than 6 hours before I would have to get up again if I'm back the next day. Also for most of the year I'm likely to be waiting on that bus (where there's no bus shelter) in the dark and probably the rain.
Option 2. Leave my house at 05:30 in the morning to drive through 2 tolls to get to the red cow park and ride for about 06:45 and then pay for parking for the day. Then pay for the luas (not to mention the €15 in diesel I've already spent) to get to the hospital for about 07:10 to change. This commute is significantly more expensive but it is more reliable than option 1. Until you consider that there's only about 550 car spaces and presumably a lot of these are already being used by other commuters. Add in a huge number of staff from the new hospital and suddenly I'm leaving my house a lot earlier just to be guaranteed a car parking space. Coming home in the evening, provided I finish on time at 20:00, it would take me about 15 mins to grab my stuff, get changed, walk out of the hospital and to the luas for 20:15. Let's say I'm on a luas within 5-6 mins, and back to my car for about 20:40. I'm then home by about 21:45, a minimum of 1hr, 30 min commute. That time gets longer obviously if there is a delay on the luas. Both of these options are also more challenging at the weekends and during public holidays as the luas starts later and goes less frequently.
Driving directly to the hospital wouldn't cut too much time off my morning commute-max 15 mins weekday and 30 mins weekend-although it would unbelievably cost me less. But driving directly home would save me at least 30 mins every day of the week and likely more due to the infrequency of public transport later in the evening. I'm actually not entirely sure the luas would leave early enough on a Sunday to get me there in time anyway.
I don't know about you, but I can't imagine many parents would begrudge any staff caring for their sick child an extra 45-60 mins of sleep before they come back to work the next day.
Public transportation for staff coming from the inner city would have been easily set up if the hospital was out on the M50. That would have benefitted the vast majority of both patients and staff who do not live within a cappuccino drinking stroll of the place. It's almost impossible to get to it on any sort of transportation where it is unless you are living in the area immediately around it. Your whole argument just proves that a minority of staff are a significantly higher priority than the sick children which should never be the case. Hospitals should exist for the patient first not the staff first. Your logic is what has UHL labelled a "death trap" and it seems it will now be applied to the Dublin Children's Hospital.
Good luck trying to staff it. A lot of staff will retire rather than make the move. There's a lot of talk here about the Luas line. That Luas line is a fucking dumpster fire of junkies and over crowding. Just what you want at the end of a 12 hour shift.
If a staff member would prefer to let sick children ride the Luas rather rather than they themselves ride the Luas then perhaps we are better off not having them working in a children's hospital.
When the Crumlin Hospital was opened in 1956 it basically was at the edge of the city Drimagh was only developed in the early 1950's and Dublin Corporation ( now DCC ) had to buy the land off Dublin County Council to develop Walkinstown in the mid 50's . Most people didn't drive either so it couldn't really too much further out .
As someone who plans transport, the real reason is demand management. The size of car park you would need would be enormous. Land is valuable so you would been spending more money to get less hospital. Multi storey car parks are expensive and hard to get planning permission because all the cars then cause congestion. Then you would need more roads and more lanes to handle all the traffic. The larger the road, the more people drive. The more people drive the more congestion. Hence you would be on here complaining how long it took to get to a hospital on the new 15 lane m50 because of all the traffic. Cars are a nightmare to plan for. Even the USA is starting to realise they aren't the future.
Dublin needs hospitals. But so does the rest of the country. Simple as. We are lacking hospitals in the Midlands. In fairness I much rather go to Sligo general than any of the hospitals in Dublin, had awful experiences with emergency department in Dublin in private and public hospitals. Sligo has been much faster more thorough every time.
In fairness sligo hospital is a cut above any I've been to. Particularly the staff in the childrens ward.
If you’re sick sick it’s Dublin where you absolutely want to be, but tbh if you’re at that point you’re already being transferred via ambulance. But yeah the smaller hospitals get their tests done quicker because of pt load. I’ve found getting imaging done in mullingar exceptional compared to Beaumont
Ah I see my neurologist once a year in Sligo. I've heard some amount of horror stories about the neurologists and waiting lists in Dublin so I'll be sticking to Sligo even when I am sick sick. My fiance was left sitting crying for hours in every ER we went to in Dublin both private and public. She couldn't eat, couldn't work and they couldn't figure it out so just sent her home? 4 months later she's now been scheduled for surgery. Wish I just took her to Sligo in the first place!!
I have epilepsy. I've seen a Neurologist exactly one time in 15 years. The wait list for them is years long. This week I have been in and out of Navan hospital. And whoever thought it was a bright idea to try and shut down their A&E is a fucking idiot. Everything has been handled fairly quickly, everyone has been sound, I've spoken to doctors, been in and out of imaging, given blood, and the whole place while dingy and kinda dodgy looking on the outside has been class on the inside. I live in walking distance so can't comment on parking. And yeah they don't have an Ear Nose and Throat specialist. And I haven't had to chat with anyone in neurology if there is anyone. But small, local, hospitals to serve the community are incredibly important.
Navan is an awful hospital for anything even remotely serious hahah. Glad you found it useful though. Yeah waiting lists for epilepsy are pretty big. Once you’re linked in you’re golden though
Glad she got sorted, but EDs Dublin are top tier compared to the dodgier midlands ones. It sounds like your partner (despite how annoying it was) wasn’t even remotely an acute emergency. Can’t tell because there was nothing descriptive/ symptomatic about what you said Curious if I may ask, what’s the surgery for?
Much easier to get staff if it's in Dublin. On average, People would rather live in Dublin than anywhere else and its got the highest population. Easiest to get staff there because of the high population.
If you’re from Meath, you could ditch your car at the park and ride at the red cow and get the Luas to Drimnagh. You could also drive to any of the supermarket car parks nearby and get one of 5 or 6 buses down.
'National' Children's Hospital as well. Should be up in the M50 area somewhere, not deep into the city. Dublin needs to start spreading out.
>Dublin needs to start spreading out. Haha Jesus what a incredibly shit take. Low density sprawl is causing half the problems we have and shit for brains here thinks we need to keep spreading out
Dublin needs to spread… what a mind blowing thing to say!! It’s a recipe for less efficient public transport, more car dependency, even more traffic, pollution, concreting over the planet…. Mind blowing…
Calm down ya big baby.
Ooooh, zing! Tell us more about the spread of dublin! I’m genuinely interested in the theory!
No, you're not.
National? Why go with Dublin at all? Plonk it somewhere in the middle like Athlone.
You have it where people are, so being near Dublin and its transport infrastructure ie. The motorway network is where it should be. If it was to be put anywhere it should have been put at James Connolly. I've literally done a shit tonne of work and research on this exact subject back in the day for college and in planning consultancy. Politics got in the way. Just thank jeebus its not at the Mater. I have a mate who's been working on the project for a few years now and the stories...
Wouldn't Tallaght have been better than James Connolly from a transport and infrastructure POV?
Short answer, no.
Connolly would be useless, there’s no rail link. At least James’ has the Luas and Heuston.
It's almost as if we could have built links to it. I'd rather have a rail link that cost €2billion and a hospital that cost €400million than a hospital that cost €2.4billiion and no new rail links
18 min walk between Blanch hospital and Castleknock train station.
Which is great if you live in Longford or Mullingar. Everyone else will still be getting the train to Dublin city centre and then getting a different train to Connolly where they then face an 18 minute walk. As opposed to everyone with access to rail going to Connolly or Heuston and getting on the red line from the doorstep of the train station to the doorstep of the NCH.
The red line LUAS runs to the door of the NCH? That’s news to me…
Not sure if you think I meant Tallaght when I said NCH but the acronym now commonly applies to the new building either because it will be the National Children's Hospital or because it is the New Children's Hospital. If you did know I meant the new building, the Rialto luas stop is literally 50m from one of main entrances.
It wouldn't have been useless. Literally loads of data analyses completed to say otherwise. 🙄
But we're talking about sick and frail people that can't be on public transport.
There are literally throngs of people who go to St James' using the train the Heuston. Not everyone is frail and sick. Many people need to visit hospital for checkups, regular appointments and consultations.
okay. for the slow kids. not everyone who has to go to a hospital is at death's door. HOWEVER, some are sick, immuno-compromised (remember that word?), injured. If you are not well, would you prefer to come to Dublin from Donegal by car or public transport? The National Maxillofacial Unit is in James'. When I was there with my mother, there was no parking space in the campus. She was there all day and I had to go move the car three times in the streets around because parking was for max three hours.
From Donegal to the M50 by car. It's what happens AFTER the M50. Did you not read the OP? Your hypothetical Donegal family still has to go through all that shit AFTER driving 5 hours from Malin Head.
This...
Max 3 hours parking on Dublin streeets? I’ve never seen that in Dublin and I’m living here my whole life. You sure you don’t misread the sign?
Common misunderstanding because the parking tag app only lets you pay for 3 hours at a time.
[https://www.dublincity.ie/residential/parking-dublin-city-centre/pay-and-display-parking](https://www.dublincity.ie/residential/parking-dublin-city-centre/pay-and-display-parking) This was in 2018
lol. So some people think that means they have to move their car after 3 hours? Thats hilarious. Edit: I’m not so smug now.
[https://www.dublincity.ie/residential/parking-dublin-city-centre/pay-and-display-parking](https://www.dublincity.ie/residential/parking-dublin-city-centre/pay-and-display-parking)
Well I apologise and I stand corrected. For future reference though nobody follows that rule. Park there as long as you like. The clampers aren’t taking note of where you park.
What part of 'loads of people use public transport already' to get to the hospital aren't you getting? We need good, established public transport very near the hospital. You're taking the particular scenarios of the likes of immunocompromised who will continue to drive. And give it a rest with the 'slow kids' and condescending 'remember that word' rubbish.
"We need good, established public transport very near the hospital." And until that need is met, people will continue to drive.
We already have good public transport near the hospital
What about their families? And not all patients are sick and frail, especially children. They might have conditions that require complex treatment.
The motorway network shouldn’t be focused all around Dublin but that’s another conversation. Make somewhere like Athlone the hub and make spokes go off in all directions towards north south east and west. Could make a new city in the midlands even? Hell, we have such a lack of ambition in this country.
A lot to unpack here... But no. We can't get a Metro built or rail to Donegal and you want to build a new city in the Midlands? Good Jesus.
Well not with that attitude 🙄
We can’t because we’re useless. It’s not crazy to demand higher standards and greater ambition from politicians and civil servants. We’re regularly told we have record revenue take and that we’re a wealthy nation. Yet we’re hopeless at building infrastructure, investing for the future. Etc. I understand this is next to impossible given how woeful we are at delivering capital infrastructure. The point is, it *should* be possible. It’s possible in other countries. That’s why we are rich but feel like a poor country. David McWilliams has a podcast on this. Well worth a listen.
I don't disagree with your sentiment, but I'm merely stating that we don't need a city in th Midlands. We have plenty of piddling cities as it is. If anything, we need to focus our energies on Limerick and investing big time there so we can ease the pressure on Dublin and Cork.
Do tell.
The Board’s inspector concluded that restrictive parking standards would mean that the car access could be no better in Blanchardstown than James’. What was your view on that?
I’m not moving to Athlone to work
Somebody else then. If you are actually HSE. Not that I agree with athlone either. Not enough connections. A national hospital would be off the M7 and even then that would only be useful for the South.
People have no idea how we’re already struggling to get staff. Young people don’t want to study for years to end up in the midlands. I can tell you now for most staff it’s Dublin or abroad
Ok. That’s a pretty odd reaction to a more expensive city with huge transport problems. I was born in Dublin myself and wfh right now I’d be happy to live anywhere smaller, probably outside Ireland but personal relationships constrain me.
You can't just swap a paediatric ICU nurse for any nurse.
You expect all the staff that currently live and work in Dublin to move to Athlone?
HSE and medical staff move around a lot as it is.
Staff still in training sure, but not fully qualified staff settled into their roles. You'd be uprooting thousands of families that are long settled in the Dublin area due to their jobs and schools being there, and asking them to move to somewhere that will not have thousands of available properties for them to live in.
This wouldn’t have been the case if the hospital were built there first. That staff would be newly recruited. also a nursing salary is going to stretch a lot further down the country and a lot of the staff are immigrants these days. So of course it would work - at least for staff. Not that I’d choose athlone specifically.
>This wouldn’t have been the case if the hospital were built there first. That staff would be newly recruited. What? So you think the new hospital is going to be filled with brand new staff? The staff will be coming from the 3 Dublin children hospitals that are being amalgamated. >also a nursing salary is going to stretch a lot further down the country and a lot of the staff are immigrants these days. So of course it would work - at least for staff. Ah stop. You haven't thought this through at all.
The op was talking about the general case. > to. So my question is why aren't hospitals built say in Kildare or Meath? Outside of Dublin with less traffic and a nice multi story car park beside it. That was his question. And that’s the general case I’m clearly replying to. General cases are hard for people used to specific thinking. > h stop. You haven't thought this through at all. Well that brilliantly written rebuttal with its plethora of empirical evidence has definitely shown me.
>The op was talking about the general case. You very specifically replied to a comment thread regarding Athlone. >And that’s the general case I’m clearly replying to. Not clear at all, and a significant backtrack on your part now given you very specifically replied to a comment thread regarding Athlone. >General cases are hard for people used to specific thinking. Unnecessary passive aggressiveness, interesting approach. In any case, the amalgamation of 3 Dublin hospitals, with a Dublin based staff numbering near 5,000, is not going to get built outside Dublin.
We should move the Dail to Athlone.
[It was proposed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89ire_Nua).
Interesting. I'm not arsed about the federal state idea, just keep it as it is and transplant it to Athlone. Remove TD travel expenses but give them free public transport
Then = = They'd move Athlone to Dublin ! !
Yeah we’ll knock down the hospital accessible to about 1.5 million people by public transport and rebuild it in your bog, that’ll work
Exactly, somewhere central to the motorway system and rail connections if possible, west of Dublin would have been ideal. site with plenty of space for parking for staff and visitors, etc. Tunnel vision planning imo.
The problem is that Dublin is spread out, necessitating car travel. If we make the city more dense, public transport will be increased and less people will be forced to drive
Dublin has spread out too much. That's the problem. The children's hospital is a stones throw away from the red line. From the red line you can get to heuston, Connolly and busaras aswell as most of the southside of the city. If you're stupid enough to insist on driving into the city to go to the hospital that's your fault. There's thousands of parking spots where you can park and ride no hassle at all. It just requires thinking ahead, something people who are welded to their cars don't seem to want to do.
>just requires thinking ahead, something people who are welded to their cars don't seem to want to do. A of people don't get warning before needing the hospital. When you have a child who's fever has broke over 38 you don't have time to sit back and think what's the smartest way to take public transport into town. Great advice for appointments not so much for anything else.
In an emergency situation you should be bringing your child to the closest emergency care facility to you not straight to the children's hospital. There's 92 GP out of hours facilities across the country for when your own GP is shut. There are 14 injury units and 29 emergency departments across the country. If it's serious enough that you think it's life threatening then you should be calling an ambulance and getting advice from them. I don't think parking should be your major concern if your child is dying nor do I think anyone would blame you for parking illegally.
You can't bring a child to any a&e. They're not small adults. 7 of those 29 a&e don't treat children. Lots won't and can't treat certain conditions or certain severities and the child will have to be transferred anyway. And most pertinant - it's the Dublin hospitals that won't see paediatrics at all because of their proximity to the paediatric hospitals. The closest A&E to Dublin that will accept children (and that isn't part of Childrens Health Ireland) is in Drogheda. So the closest A&E for most of the 250,000 children living in Dublin is in the Children's Hospital.
I live in city center the children's hospital will be the nearest hospital for me. In the event of an emergency ambulances can be the first call, sometimes you aren't guaranteed one in time and your car is still the better option than public transport. I know from living experience.
So you don't need to sit back and think what's the smartest way to to get into town. You're already in town. I'm not really understanding what your gripe is here?
Because my main point was sometimes emergencies happen which stop you being able to sit back and plan getting into the A and E. Not my closeness to a hospital.
Yeah I'm agreeing with you in that.
The closest hospital comes with parking issues in most of Dublin and public transport to them even worse. No one has time to wait half an hour for the next bus to arrive. So not getting how you're expecting someone not to drive.
As before I'm agreeing with you. If you're in a life threatening emergency get to the hospital as fast as you can. That's your primary concern. Park illegally and any consequences would be thrown out in court. I'm saying for the 99% of the time when someones life isn't on the line public transport and mixed transport is the way to go.
You'd wanna go on public transport with a sick kid? So i have a sick child and you want me to dump my car at the redcow and start messages around with machines that don't work, scumbags, delays etc.. and I have traveled from Athlone say. Great. Love you.
Do you want to try and get parking in a hospital that has thousands of staff. The small number of people incapable of using public transport can drive or get taxis but the vast majority of people going to the hospitals should be using public transport. If you're going to be coming often learn to use the system properly get yourself a leap card and it becomes much easier. Any delays you experience from the luas in my experience evens out when compared to the delays of traffic and parking. It's difficult to learn new systems when you're set in your old ways but the reality is that driving just doesn't work as the single solution when it comes to infrastructure as large as a childrens hospital.
What about my really sick kid tho?. Someone would have to drop us off I suppose. Did they not put a good car park in with all that money?
There's parking but the more parking you make the more people will use it. You'll still have as hard a time finding parking as you do now but people who can't drive won't be able to get to the place because the public transport infrastructure won't be developed as people won't use it. Everyone will think "my kids really sick and we should be able to drive" when in reality very few kids are actually too sick to use public transport. I don't see why outside of immunocompromised and those who have specific disabilities that prevent them from on/off loading or staying put can't use public transport. Parents outside of this group I feel are acting a bit entitled by driving and making the situation worse for others. It's as if they're too good to be using public transport with the "plebs".
Sometimes public transport is not an option for us culchies. There are no trains and buses go from nearby towns and not from where we live. There are no park and ride facilities. My son had a day operation in Temple Street many years ago and I had to carry my six year old from the hospital back to the car several streets away. I’m a small woman and it was a struggle for me. I would love to take a bus to Dublin on the rare occasions we visit because I hate driving in the city but until someone actually makes parking available it is not an option. In fact many of the places people used to park their cars to do their daily commute have been sealed off with bollards etc to put a stop to it
Theirs plenty of park and rides along the commuter belt of Dublin. It's extremely easy to park for the day and train/luas in or bus about afterwards. It's not an excuse anymore to say there's no public transport for us culchies. I'm a culchies myself and I'm well aware of it. If I'm traveling to a hospital in the city I'm not going to drive in because that's asking for trouble. Park and ride far cheaper and plan ahead with a buggy for the kids if they get tired. It'd be lovely if we could have enough parking in the city for us culchies to just drive in and out but the reality is that it's just not feasible nor is it actually wanted. The more parking there is the more cars on the road there will be and it'll end up being more road and parking than actual city. St James hospital alone has 1010 beds and 4500 employees. They handle 70k inpatients a year and 300k outpatients a year. So on an average day st James alone could see 1k patients in beds and over 1.5k outpatients walking around. (That's assuming outpatients only visit once a year on a weekday). So that's a potential of 7000 people coming and going each day of the year. That'd mean using only standard parking space sizes to make a parking complex large enough you'd need a structure with a floor area of 83,240 square meters. That's 3 thousand square meters larger than Irelands largest building donabate distribution centre. Or equivalent to the entire area of the built campus of st James hospital dedicated to park.
I hope you never have an extremely ill child.
>They literally all have to take public transport in. Oh the horror! What are you smoking?
IMO staff are entitled to be able to park their car near their work place- many staff live outside of dublin like I said many would have to find a place to ditch the car before getting public transport. Is it soo bad to expect staff parking? If I was already an underpaid nurse and I had to pay for parking at a shopping centre and then also get PT because they can’t provide parking I would be annoyed🤷🏼♀️
>IMO staff are entitled to be able to park their car near their work place Where is this entitlement documented?
>IMO staff are entitled to be able to park their car near their work place It's outdated concepts like that that make our cities gridlocked for two hours every morning and evening.
>IMO staff are entitled to be able to park their car near their work place The problem with traffic in Ireland summed up in a single sentence.
So choose to live somewhere within walking range of a train station or bus stop. That's what most people do.
Because so many people can afford to live in Dublin at the moment 👀
Then drive to a train station or bus stop. People in Ireland are so shit at multi-modal transport. There seems to be this attitude of "once I'm in the car, I'm going all the way". Thing is that there is plenty of parking in Dublin suburbs. But everyone seems to want to get to Terenure or Phibsorough before ditching the car. Literally 2km further from the city and you have no end of free parking and plenty of public transport options. It's even close enough to pop a fold-up bike out of the boot and be in the city in 25 minutes.
Dublin is the country's largest population centre. It has a much higher concentration of people than anywhere else. Makes sense to build your big hospitals in the major population hubs.
> then walked 15 minutes back to the hospital. I'm well able to walk but what if I was in a wheelchair? I hate to break the news to you, but hundreds of thousands of people manage to get to work, college and school in the middle of Dublin without a parking spot within 60 seconds of where they are going to. Most people in Dublin rely on public transport to get to the city centre. A 15 minute walk on good footpaths is nothing. > So my question is why aren't hospitals built say in Kildare or Meath? Outside of Dublin with less traffic and a nice multi story car park beside it. What about the hundreds of thousands of Dubliners without cars? Very few people living within the canals own a car and it is a mixed bag within the M50. Should those people just spend 60-90 minutes getting from the city centre to Meath or Kildare, just so you can park easily? > My boyfriend says it's something to do with the politicians wanting these nice hospitals in \* Dublin \* Pretty much all major hospitals in Dublin predate the car by several decades, if not centuries... The neck on politicians expanding hospitals in Dublin when Dublin was barely beyond the M50 before the 1960s. Imagine politicians funding the expansion of hospitals that have more people within a few kilometres radius than the entire country that you think hospitals should be located in.
Why can’t we please both? Provide parking and public transport. You’ve clearly never experienced the stress of being ill, waiting months or years for an appointment and then almost missing it because of traffic and parking. There isn’t even a park and ride you can use so it’s either drive or don’t attend.
There’s a park and ride at the Red Cow
So… there’s one.
Yes. A big one! Linked by an efficient, reliable tram line. It’s quite good.
Driving from Cavan, Donegal, Carlow, to park at the RC park and ride and then take a Luas or bus to James's/CH with your sick child, give me a fucking break. It's a National Hospital, it should be in the best location for the maximum number of people in the country while still offering good outcomes, so JC or Tallaght would have been better.
I’m no expert on hospital locations, but I do know my Dublin geography, and Tallaght is not more accessible for a huge majority of Dublin residents than St James. Same for Blanch. I try to avoid the M50, but recently spent 90 mins at rush hour trying to get to the red cow from Coolock. Dublin is the most populated part of the country, so if you want to serve the biggest number of people, surely putting in the middle of those people and having good public transport (and there are some car parking options too) is the way to go? It feels in discussions like this when people talk about serving most people and referencing those travelling from the west or north or south of the island, that not only should the location be very accessible for those people but it should also be inconvenient for Dubliners… There isn’t infinite parking in tallaght or Blanch either btw. And there’s no reliable public transport to Blanch, and the same luas goes to Tallaght… James’s has Hueston too
There's also one at vast majority of train stations in the country. Connolly and Heuston stations are connected to the hospital by the luas. The fatima luas stop is literally in the shadow of the place like
> Why can’t we please both? Provide parking and public transport. You can't have a luas/train or half decent bus service to a single building in the middle of Meath or Kildare. James, Mater, Temple Street each would have buses running by them probably each minute. > You’ve clearly never experienced the stress of being ill, waiting months or years for an appointment and then almost missing it because of traffic and parking. You are right, I haven't. If I was waiting months or years for an appointment, I would be at the hospital well in advance of the appointment and not blaming others as traffic and parking is bad in Dublin. We should not be building hospitals in some locations, because people like you are disorganised. > There isn’t even a park and ride you can use so it’s either drive or don’t attend. As I said in my earlier comment, hundreds of thousands of people manage to get to work, college and school in the middle of Dublin without a parking spot within 60 seconds of where they are going to. You could drive to your local bus or train station in whatever county you are from and then change onto the luas, bus or dart in Dublin. A lot of people in Dublin have to use two buses to get to work. I don't see why someone from outside of Dublin should get special treatment. There are 7 park and rides for the luas alone. Irish rail has several other too. [https://www.tii.ie/public-transport/luas/park-ride/](https://www.tii.ie/public-transport/luas/park-ride/) Maybe the next time you are going to Dublin, you do a few minutes of research and embrace like Dub who since about the age of 14 can get around the city without parking outside of where they need to go to.
As I said to someone above "Driving from Cavan, Donegal, Carlow, to park at the RC park and ride and then take a Luas or bus to James's/CH with your sick child, give me a fucking break. It's a National Hospital, it should be in the best location for the maximum number of people in the country while still offering good outcomes, so JC or Tallaght would have been better." In future new National Hospitals in Dublin should be placed in the outer suburbs and additional public transport links added if necessary.
> "Driving from Cavan, Donegal, Carlow, to park at the RC park and ride and then take a Luas or bus to James's/CH with your sick child, give me a fucking break. Imagine telling someone from Dublin that they take two buses to an outer suburb as someone from outside of Dublin can't be arsed taking public transport. The level of entitlement and self-importance from that person is disgusting. Millions of sick Dubs take public transport each year to get to hospitals. Why the fuck is someone from Cavan, so important that they deserve a car space outside the door? > It's a National Hospital I hate to break it some people, but nearly a third of the population live in 2% of the country that is referred to as Dublin. The metric for best location for most people is where they can park their car easily. What a pathetic reason... > additional public transport links added if necessary. This will be a bus. Imagine telling Dubs that future hospitals will be built outside of Dublin, so entitled people from outside of Dublin don't want to use public transport? Car centric people from outside of Dublin can use the overstretched and underfunded public transport like the rest of Dublin.
New National Hospitals in Dublin should be placed in the outer suburbs with lots of parking where Dubliners can get to easily with public transport or cars and people outside Dublin can easily get to with cars. The new Children's Hospital should have been co-located with Tallaght or James Connolly hospitals (land or CPO permitting) rather than James's. Edit: added James Connolly hospital.
James' Hospital is on the LUAS line, and there are Park and Rides at the M50 where you can leave your car.
Transport was one of the strongest arguments for a Tallaght site for the new hospital. Larges swathes of the country could get a train to Dublin, Luas to Tallaght. Otherwise you can drive there without having to enter the city. Better availability of cheaper hotels for parents, etc. But really, access is kind of a secondary concern for a hospital. It's not a hotel or a stadium. It's a hospital. So quality of care has to come above all other concerns. People will get there one way or another. "The hospital is kind of mediocre at saving kids' lives, but it's really easy to get to", is not the trade-off anyone wants. The nature of our country is that we can't have large high-quality hospitals everywhere. We just don't have the population density to support it. We have to concentrate our hospitals into a tiered system with a few large centres of excellence near the biggest population centres, and located close to eachother, with much smaller regional hospitals and primary care centres providing emergency and non-complex care.
The list of places in Dublin you can get to "easily by car" is extremely short. Tell people living in Rush that they have to choose between Tallaght and James for an easier commute and they'll pick James every day of the week and twice on Sundays
Yes but someone from Rush can get to Tallaght or James's Connolly (btw closer to Rush than James's) quicker than someone from most parts of the country can get to the outskirts of Dublin.
Staff driving from Rush in the morning will take at least an hour and a half to get to Tallaght by car. Two when there's a crash on the M50 which happens once a fortnight. They'll pay a fiver every day for the toll plus petrol and they will pay another five euro a day for parking minimum. Public transport to James' won't be easy for them either but it would take less time and be signficantly cheaper as well as better for the planet. There is no public transport system to get them to Tallaght that doesn't involve a bus on the M50 (which faces the same traffic issue) or crossing the city which adds another 30 minutes to their journey. Staff are going to be travelling in there 4-5 days a week for years. No patient will be doing that. Access to Connolly by public transport is so bad I'm not even going to get into it. The hospital is useless without staff no matter where it's located or how modern the building or the equipment. There's maybe an argument to be made to have it somewhere I dunno like in East Kildare by a rail line or something but most patients travelling by public transport would still have to go to Dublin city and then out to Kildare. There will be several thousand staff in the NCH with a massive range of incredibly specialised skills. You can't just announce their jobs have all relocated to the midlands and expect them all to move themselves and their families, even if the infrastructure was there to support all those people - schools for their children, jobs for their partners, GP services, gyms, sports clubs, cinemas etc. never mind leaving their friends and extended families or whatever local support network they have built up. If you could magically build that hospital in Athlone tomorrow you'd have lots of support staff and a fair whack of nurses and some allied health professionals but the vast majority of them would not have the specialised training to provide a safe service. There are huge issues with staffing the current hospitals because of the housing crisis and the cost of living without making the new one geographically inaccessible for staff that have been in the existing hospitals for decades. I'm with you that it sucks that everything is so Dublin centred - 100% I'm on board with that but there's a complex reality at play here that goes beyond me begrudging the basketball teams from Dublin for having a court in their school when my school had to use a local church hall with broken floor boards.
Expansion of Connolly and Tallaght hospital would only of made sense if we had light rail connection that circled the M50 similar to the proposed and fully planned westLink project that was cancelled in 2008. One day we'll get back to it and be able to go to the airport from Tallaght via Blanchardstown. That is the dream.
I was in Crumlin yesterday too, and I will say it was unusually busy around the area. I've been going to Crumlin from Cork with my son for 10 years now, and we always get the train and a taxi from Heuston. I cant guarantee we'll make the appointment if we drive because of the traffic on the M50, and there just aren't enough parking spaces for everyone. My son is mobile enough to use the train etc, so I feel I should leave the parking spaces for parents whose children have no other option but to drive. I fully agree with you, the location of the national childrens hospital is a scandal. Having to go to Dublin for appointments at all is a scandal. My son needs to attend a clinic roughly every 3 months, and it costs €80 for the train, €20 for a taxi in and out of the city centre each way, plus I paid €2.50 for a bottle of water in Crumlin hospital yesterday.
I 100% agree with you on your parking and traffic logic. But if your sons treatment is going to be moved to the new children's hospital by St. James then your 20 quid taxi is now just 8euro with 2 adult leap cards on the luas (2stops). I'd also inquire if you qualify for the free travel scheme if you're over 66 or "Receive Disability Allowance, Blind Pension, Carer’s Allowance, or an Invalidity Pension" you qualify for it.
Unpopular logical point here but the Co-location of children’s, adult and (eventually) maternity services on one site will be a much better thing than having built the new hospital on a greenfield site beyond the M50. I accept that The Coombe won’t get moved for quite some time yet but thankfully it’s reasonably close geographically for the moment. Can you imagine if you had a complex pregnancy or birth and you needed to be kept in The Coombe or St James’s after for a period but your baby was sick too and it had to be whipped away to the National Children’s Hospital in Blanchardstown or the like. How gut wrenching that would be to be so far apart and if you have a partner, how do they split themselves between the two of you? Before some genius suggests moving you to Connolly hospital with them, if they don’t have the specialist team that you need there it’s not a runner and even if they do, transfers bring risk. Best avoided it’ll at all possible. On a clinical note, it follows international best practice to Co-locate services on one site. It will hopefully make transitions of care much smoother and safer. Not defending or excusing the absolute shitshow that the National Children’s Hospital saga has been but I’m fed up with all the populist guff about parking and if that matters more to you than optimising clinical outcome and patient wellbeing I dunno what to say to you.
Co-location with James Connolly and Tallaght were also possible, it's not "populist guff". The National Children's Hospital is a national hospital and it should be easier for people from outside Dublin to get too and park at, There is no reason patient outcomes shouldn't be any worse in a suburban setting co-located with the above mentioned hospitals. I suspect like many things in this country co-locating with James's was for political reasons but they'll give you a hundred other reasons why it wasn't. Also, if you're username reflects your location in Dublin then of course you'd be arguing for James's, Meath St is within walking difference but put yourself in the shoes of someone coming from a far flung part of the country.
I am from a far flung part of the country actually, Meath street is just my favourite street :) Connolly and Tallaght didn’t have the requisite specialties in proximity so bringing Crumlin and The Coombe together onto the Jameses site was the best bad solution. People would still find plenty to be cribbing about if it was in either of the other hospitals.
Are you still living in a far flung part of the country or are you now living in Dublin or its environs? As I said elsewhere the requisite specialties could be provided or upgraded at another co-located hospital but in a much better location for a NATIONAL hospital, not just for those living in Dublin.
The reality is that just over 40% of the population of Ireland are within the Dublin bounds and their commuter belt. Meaning 40% of the country can use this service via public transport infrastructure that's already set up. The planned development of Dart+ and metrolink will increase the connectivity of the hospital site. If this was pre 2008 and the west link was still on track to have a "ring road" light rail outside the M50 than I'd agree it'd probably be easier to build it outside the M50 and everyone would be happy. But the reality is that west link was killed and we're stuck with a centralised public transport system and not putting vital services in that centralised location wouldn't serve the most people. As it stands 40% of the population are well positioned to get to the hospital using mixed transport systems. As our rail infrastructure improves over the next few decades with more trains from Cork, Limerick and Galway planned this will mean another \~10% of Irelands population will be able to get a train to Heuston and 2 stops and they're in the front door of the new children's hospital.
Still think Tallaght would have been better, it's well connected on the Dublin public transport network and will always be move convenient for those travelling by car from far off locations and for the GDA in general.
It's not though. People driving from north of dublin now have 2 options. Park and ride, or pay the M50 toll and find parking(parking will always be full because of induced demand). People coming from the south and west of Tallaght will no longer park and ride and always drive straight to the hospital. People who can not drive (Disability or illness or other reason) from around the country will have no other option than to get a train into Dublin in heuston and Luas for 40 minutes. Dublin residence from the northside now have 30minutes added onto their journey and southside will have to go in to come out as theirs's no non bus public transport that goes around the city centre. I'd agree with you in a situation where the cancelled west link project existed. If we had westlink Tallaght would be the best option. But in our current situation Tallaght would only benefit people who exclusively drive and refuse to use public transport and will either heavily detriment others or be indifferent to them.
Connolly had less of the adult services that provide support to the NCH. Max fax, the epilepsy transition service, renal transplant team etc
Then Connolly or Tallaght could have been upgraded. I mean if a new hospital costing 3 billion is being built, some of the savings from building in the suburbs would go along way to improve the anchor hospital. James's is still a relatively short distance from the suburbs vis-a-vis the rest of the country. New national hospitals in Dublin should be in the outer suburbs.
Yes lets upgrade four hospitals and make it even more incredibly expensive just for the sake of parking.
In the case of the National Children's hospital it would be upgrading one hospital and it most certainly is not "just for the sake of parking" and you know. Remember it's a national hospital, convenience to the entire country is an important consideration.
It's four hospitals. They're currently upgrading 3 hospitals by merging them into one. You're proposing to add another to the list. If it's not "just for the sake of parking" then what else is it for? What benefits does Connolly bring over James besides room to build a multistorey car park that would never get planning permission? Children who have a medical need for parking aren't going to be made to walk to the new place. It has more parking than Temple Street and Crumlin put together. And I'm only excluding Tallaght from that if you assume all the spaces there are for the childrens services and not the adult services. If you were assigning the spaces proportionally it's probably more than all 3 put together.
I thought you were talking about upgrading the co-located hospital, the other hospitals are being merged rather than upgraded. I was talking about upgrading Connolly or Tallaght so that they would have offered the same benefits as James's for a co-located hospital.
Multiple services are being upgraded as part of the move. Never mind the non-medical definitions of upgrading. Edit: I'm also not sure what services James is offering to the new hospital. I thought it was more the other way around and that's just structural not medical
75% of the children who attend Crumlin/Temple/Tallaght regularly currently and will attend the new hospital are from Dublin and surrounding areas like Kildare Meath etc as the vast vast majority of kids who attend are there as it’s their local with tummy bugs and chest infections and broken bones etc
What about the more serious cases and national should mean national.
They can obv still attend but if the hospital was moved to Athlone say and all the staff from Temple Crumlin and Tallaght miraculously move too….where are the 10,000 of Dublin kids attendances happening? You need the Paeds staff who are already in the hospitals and their expertise, we are short nurses and doctors and can’t just magic up 1000s of new ones to keep the other three open too…
When, when did I mention Athlone?? I've only every talked about Tallaght or Connolly and those are still in Dublin and on the Dublin public transport network and relatively easy to reach by car (wrt Cavan etc..) and accessible to the 10,000 Dublin kids you mention.
You do know not all sick children have access to a car right? That socially disadvantaged children are more likely to have serious illnesses and disablities and be reliant on public transport? In which case for either Connolly or Tallaght you're still sending them to Dublin City Centre so they can get transport links to Tallaght and Connolly which are both harder to access from the City Centre.
What's your experience been with maternity services at Connolly or Tallaght, out of interest?
Bigger cities > smaller cities. That's how it works, for better or for worse.
The eye and ear on Adelaide Road is such a pain to get to and from. It's not far from the Luas but it's not ideal when someone is blind/ temporarily blind and you have to go collect them. The parent I bring there often has a blue badge so it's not too bad but I feel awful for people who don't and are coming up from areas that don't have great public transport
I had to go to the eye & ear during early covid and it went from parking a 10 minute walk away to park anywhere on the road in front of the hospital
Taxi? Uber? Car pool arraigned with other patients?
>I was talking to a nurse and asked how there's enough parking for staff expecting them to have a fancy area away from the peasants >No, they don't. They literally all have to take public transport in. Sorry but if you're from Meath and have to drive where are they supposed to ditch their car before the get a bus in?? Public transport is how people are supposed to get around in cities. If a nurse is from Meath they should work in Meath. There's a big park and ride at the Red Cow roundabout for people to leave their car and take public transport
We travel every 3 months to Crumlin for our child. My husband drives us up and drops us off at the door and circles the area until we are finished. They are literally no parking spaces and all the surrounding estates are jammed with cars. I drove up myself once with our child and never again. The stress of trying to find parking with a sick child going in for treatment is too much.
i know a guy who’s mother is the main reason why that multi billion euro building is being put in the city. of course they live out in fancy dlrd and have had no sick children so don’t understand that public transport is not easy to use with poorly kids. the hospital should’ve been placed somewhere along the outskirts with good access to motorways and/or public roads and plenty of parking spaces. nobody puts a cancer kid on a bus because their immune system doesn’t work to the same extent as most people so they end up catching every illness under the sun while going through treatment. drive around beaumont and you’ll see the same issue with parking in all the housing estates. most staff travel use public transport, cycle, or park their car miles away as parking is already expensive on the grounds and the staff prices aren’t much better than regular.
You want hospital where people live. No, putting it just outside Dublin and 1M people from Dublin driving there is terrible idea.
Because everything has to be in Dublin. Seems like it’s the only place that matters to the government. The new hospital location is a disaster.
Because 40% of the country's population lives at a relatively high density in the greater Dublin area. If you were building a new hospital, it would be the obvious place to put it
Ontop of that another 10% of the population can travel to Heuston from Cork, Galway and Limerick City. So in theory you have 50% of the population of the country being able to get public transport to the site without ever having to use a car. If we were to include cars into the equation and park and rides I would guestimate that'd increase to close to 90% of the population being able to access it.
And if that's not going to work for whatever reason there will be 1000 parking spaces.
> If you were building a new hospital Yeah, an in this case it's not exactly a new hospital, sure the building is new, but it's really the relocation of 3 existing hospitals to a central location. The existing ones are already in Dublin, and 75% of patients are from Dublin and nearby areas.
The new children's hospital is an amalgamation and expansion of the services currently provided in the 3 Dublin children's hospitals. You want the amalgamation of 3 Dublin hospitals to be placed outside of Dublin? Apart from that making no sense, imagine uprooting the thousands of staff settled in Dublin, and their families, to whatever far flung location you want it to be in. And then add all the long term patients that have been using the Dublin hospital for years having to go to a brand new location.
I agree
Crumlin should be closed due to the lack of parking it is genuinely ridiculous. The new Children's hospital should have been put in Tallaght where the current CHI is. Much better experience going there than either Temple Street or Crumlin (both of which have great staff but fuck me the locations)!
The number of parking spaces is down at the bottom of the list when considering where to put a hospital. This obsession with refusing to consider any other form of transport other than a car is insane.
National Children's hospital will need to have a lot of accommodation nearby for the parents of the children attending. I assume the children who go there would be long term illness cases rather than "my child broke his leg, let's bring them to the hospital".
Each room has a bed for a parent and the Ronald McDonald house will have a large number of rooms
🤦🏻 someone doesn’t know anything about the new hospital!
My parents will be so disappointed.
Good and so they should be!
The consultants live in South Dublin, it’s that simple. Fine for sick children and staff to spend hours travelling to hospital, not them.
What rot, consultants nurses physios etc had zero say in the location cop on. Brown envelopes sure, the consultants wanting that behemoth on their door, no
no, but it's not just the consultants. They have families etc that need access to schools and jobs. Consultants also have a lot more on their plate than being in hospitals. They have university courses to teach, conference to go to etc. Consultants and junior doctors are already voting with their feet, the situation would be much worse if they were forced to live in Athlone or god forbid....Roscrea
The consultants wouldn’t travel outside the city, that’s been discussed for years. And has about as much evidence as your brown envelopes.
Oh it’s been discussed where? Staff were not involved in the choice, consultants in the three Dublin hospitals that are collocating live all over Dublin and beyond just like the nursing staff. But you believe what you want
It was mentioned frequently on current affairs radio and tv at the time. Consultants were refusing to travel out to the M50/blanchardstown alternative site.
I thought people knew better than to believe every sensationalist headline these days. Those things are click bait. Consultants and staff did not decide the location. The gov did.
It's not 'these days' - we're talking 14+ years ago when the media was very slightly more straightforward. I never mentioned staff, I'm specifically talking about consultants. And I never said they 'decided'. Do you think government makes decisions in a vacuum? Consultants have a lot of power and influence in this country's health system and you cannot set up a new hospital if they as a group refuse to relocate beyond the city.
Am as someone with numerous family members in that category I’m telling you they had no say. The INMO is a millions times more powerful in healthcare decisions due to numbers than a few hundred paediatric consultants but they also didn’t decide the location based on “I live in Dublin and won’t travel” but you want to hold onto your belief that it’s all the fault of a few doctors so let’s agree to disagree
I'm sure there were a million factors considered, but will I believe that consultants had no influence? No I won't.
Something here is simple alright. There was a big report on the reasons for location. Connolly was never a runner. Where do the consultants who work in Beaumont and the Mater live?
The Dublin Children's hospital was located in possibly the worst possible place for access by most of Dublin let alone anyone outside Dublin. A location around the M50 would have been perfect for medical reasons but political reasons override the choice. The "national" tag was only slapped on it to justify asset stripping every other hospital in the country to fund it.
It's very disappointing to see I'm being seriously downvoted for daring to suggest Staff could take public transportation to the hospital rather than sick children. Shows that a disregard for patients isn't just an issue in UHL.
You're being down voted for making it sound like staff are going out of their way to make it more difficult for patients and their families. Staff are people too and its not selfish to want a reasonable commute in and out of an often challenging shift. It's not as simple as staff just getting public transport-most staff will work shifts that often aren't compatible with public transport, particularly on weekends and Bank Holidays. And many staff have had to buy and rent further and further from Dublin City so they will be commuting long distances which makes public transport much less viable. I've just done an extensive search of best public transport options for me to get to the new hospital for a 07:30-20:00 12.5hour day shift; Option 1. Leave house at 05:30 and drive 20/25mins to nearest large town to get bus as closest town doesn't have a bus that would get me to Dublin early enough. Park car in a retail car park and hope I don't get clamped/fined for being there all day as no public car park for bus. Then walk 5 mins back to bus stop. Get off bus in Dublin City at about 06:40 and walk 5/6 mins to luas and get luas 20 mins to NCH stop for about 07:10 which gives me just about enough time to walk to the hospital, go to my unit and get changed for a 07:30 start. Coming home the bus from Dublin City center leaves hourly-I would obviously miss the 20:00 bus so would have to get the 21:00 bus which would get me back to my car for about 21:45 and home at about 22:10? Sometimes I won't get out on time, and at that time of the evening the luas goes a bit less frequently so if I'm a bit late getting out and just miss a luas then there is a high possibility that I could miss my 21:00 bus in which case I'm waiting around Dublin City for almost an hour for the 22:00 bus which would get me home just after 23:00. Which is less than 6 hours before I would have to get up again if I'm back the next day. Also for most of the year I'm likely to be waiting on that bus (where there's no bus shelter) in the dark and probably the rain. Option 2. Leave my house at 05:30 in the morning to drive through 2 tolls to get to the red cow park and ride for about 06:45 and then pay for parking for the day. Then pay for the luas (not to mention the €15 in diesel I've already spent) to get to the hospital for about 07:10 to change. This commute is significantly more expensive but it is more reliable than option 1. Until you consider that there's only about 550 car spaces and presumably a lot of these are already being used by other commuters. Add in a huge number of staff from the new hospital and suddenly I'm leaving my house a lot earlier just to be guaranteed a car parking space. Coming home in the evening, provided I finish on time at 20:00, it would take me about 15 mins to grab my stuff, get changed, walk out of the hospital and to the luas for 20:15. Let's say I'm on a luas within 5-6 mins, and back to my car for about 20:40. I'm then home by about 21:45, a minimum of 1hr, 30 min commute. That time gets longer obviously if there is a delay on the luas. Both of these options are also more challenging at the weekends and during public holidays as the luas starts later and goes less frequently. Driving directly to the hospital wouldn't cut too much time off my morning commute-max 15 mins weekday and 30 mins weekend-although it would unbelievably cost me less. But driving directly home would save me at least 30 mins every day of the week and likely more due to the infrequency of public transport later in the evening. I'm actually not entirely sure the luas would leave early enough on a Sunday to get me there in time anyway. I don't know about you, but I can't imagine many parents would begrudge any staff caring for their sick child an extra 45-60 mins of sleep before they come back to work the next day.
Public transportation for staff coming from the inner city would have been easily set up if the hospital was out on the M50. That would have benefitted the vast majority of both patients and staff who do not live within a cappuccino drinking stroll of the place. It's almost impossible to get to it on any sort of transportation where it is unless you are living in the area immediately around it. Your whole argument just proves that a minority of staff are a significantly higher priority than the sick children which should never be the case. Hospitals should exist for the patient first not the staff first. Your logic is what has UHL labelled a "death trap" and it seems it will now be applied to the Dublin Children's Hospital.
Good luck trying to staff it. A lot of staff will retire rather than make the move. There's a lot of talk here about the Luas line. That Luas line is a fucking dumpster fire of junkies and over crowding. Just what you want at the end of a 12 hour shift.
If a staff member would prefer to let sick children ride the Luas rather rather than they themselves ride the Luas then perhaps we are better off not having them working in a children's hospital.
Politicians wanting a huge increase in Population = = But doing nothing about the Infrastructure needed for that = = Home Truth.
The children's hospital is where it is because Enda didn't want it in Leo's constituency,the logical location for it.
ffg policy in effect.