No great rush on new Emergency Department

It could be five years before a new emergency department would be open at University Hospital Galway – and there was no plan to build modular units at Merlin Park Hospital to ease overcrowding in the meantime, according to Saolta officials.

The Regional Health Forum West meeting heard that a delegation of five councillors had last week met with Health Minister Simon Harris who had given a firm commitment to include funding to build a new emergency department in the mid-term HSE spending review that occurs in June.

Councillor Mary Hoade (FF) said the Minister had said he had received only an indicative figure on the cost from the Saolta Hospital Group – between €65m and €120m – and expressed a wish to have a definitive figure “sooner rather than later”.

Cllr Michael Kilcoyne (Ind) said all Forum members would be much older by the time a new emergency department would be opened.

“At least four to five years before it’s there. [Minister Harris] did say he’d look into the possibility of moving some facilities to Merlin Park,” he remarked.

Chief Operating Officer for the Saolta University Health Care Group, Ann Cosgrove, said so far they had received €100,000 to progress the design of the emergency department. The next step was to tender for a design team.

She said while the Minister had indicated he hoped the design would be completed by the end of this year, that may not be feasible given the need to follow the public procurement process.

“The €100,000 is for the design of a seven-storey block. The costs are with the Minister. We gave a full copy of the cost benefit analysis and they are with HSE Estates nationally who deal with infrastructural projects so they have them and they are available,” she told this month’s meeting.

Fine Gael Councillor Padraig Conneely also queried the figure of €2.5m given to the delegation by Saolta officials to fully open the 75-bed new unit which caused confusion among the staff of the Department of Health.

Ms Cosgrove said the confusion arose over the cost of staffing both the old wards that would become empty once the new unit was operational.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.