New pitch in swap for UHG’s ‘temporary’ helipad

A ‘temporary’ helipad built on community scrubland in Shantalla in 2013, which was supposed to be there for just six months, has become the busiest hospital helicopter landing-pad in the country.

The landing pad at University Hospital Galway – on lands loaned to the HSE by the City Council nearly six years ago – caters for 50% of the hospital helicopter movements in the country. A second helipad onsite cannot be used due to more stringent national regulations in relation to helicopter landings.

Chief Executive of Galway City Council, Brendan McGrath said the helipad issue would be dealt with as part of an overall plan with the hospital.

He said that there was €100 million in the National Development Plan to build a new Emergency Department at UHG. That cannot go ahead without a traffic solution for the site, which the Council is devising, in consultation with the hospital authorities and National Transport Authority.

It includes creating two new entrances to the city hospital. One will be along Lower Newcastle Road to facilitate vehicular traffic, with the existing entrance at the traffic lights junction with University Road reserved for ambulances and buses. A second new entrance – for buses only – will be built out the back of the hospital along Séamus Quirke Road (SQR). It will be the beginning of a bus corridor through the hospital campus. This route will speed up the bus travel-times from the west to the east, via city centre, and will result in a continuous bus lane or bus priority corridor from SQR, into Eyre Square via Salmon Weir Bridge.

Cllr Collette Connolly (Ind) asked why UHG wasn’t using one of 13 surface car-parks on the site to facilitate a new helipad suggested that up to 500 cars parked illegally at the hospital every day.

Cllr Billy Cameron (Lab) said the Council was “duped” by the HSE when it said that the helipad would be temporary, but he recognised that it was an essential facility for Coast Guard and emergency hospital helicopter landings. Mr McGrath indicated that a new sports field at Shantalla would be provided to the community.