HSE has no timeline for construction of new Emergency Dept in Galway

The HSE West still has no timeline for when a new permanent Emergency Department will be built at University Hospital Galway.

Tony Canavan, Chief Executive of Saolta Community Healthcare Group, has revealed, however, that the proposed new permanent Emergency Department, and a new Women’s and Children’s development, will cost over €300 million.

This hefty price tag – along with the scale and complexity of the joint development – meant that the project had to be subject to the full rigours of the latest ‘public spending code’ of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

Mr Canavan said the project will require Government approval on its preliminary business case, and two additional Government approvals will be needed at two various milestones for the project, before it can go out to tender or construction can start.

He said that once the business case is approved, “we will be able to provide a date for the planning application” for the new ED and Women and Children’s development at the city site.

Mr Canavan confirmed that works on a new temporary ED at UHG were ongoing and could be operational in April or May of this year.

The existing ED is not fit for purpose and is being decommissioned. The permanent new ED and Women and Children’s development will be built on the site of the existing ED. The temporary ED is needed in the interim to facilitate the closure of the old ED while the new ED is being built.

Mr Canavan insisted that the facilities at the new ED would be an improvement to the conditions at the current ED.

He was responding to queries from Galway City Councillor John Connolly (FF) who expressed his frustration at the Regional Health Forum West about the lack of a definitive timeline for the construction of a new ED, the need for which was identified a decade ago.

Cllr Connolly, who has consistently raised the issue with HSE management, said while he accepted projects had to go through various planning stages, the approach to this development was “no people centric”.

He said that there was an unacceptable inequality in the care being given to Galway and West of Ireland patients at the ED in UHG compared to the east coast public hospitals.

On March 11, he said, at the ED in UHG some 34 patients waited on trolleys for over 24 hours. On the same day, twelve patients waited in excess of 24 hours to be admitted to all 15 hospitals in Dublin and Leinster.

Cllr Connolly said he accepted that the building that emerges once the process is finished will be the most optimal, but he said it was unacceptable that patients in the west had to wait years to get it.

Mr Canavan said he did not disagree with much of the criticism levelled by Cllr Connolly, and the ED at UHG is the busiest of any level 4 hospital in the country.

But he said the new permanent ED was a project of in excess of €300m and it had to go through spending control rigours and various Government approvals.

Cllr Connolly said that the permanent ED needs “political delivery” and he urged Cabinet Ministers to expedite the delivery of the project.

He said that in recent days Government had shown what could be done to deal with the crisis of refugees arriving in Ireland. A similar crisis was evident in the ED in UHG and similar urgency was required to solve it, he added.