AN AREA NEAR the Phoenix Park is the latest site in Dublin to be proposed as a location for the National Children’s Hospital.
The Dublin-based developers Flynn & O’Flaherty have claimed that they could build the new hospital on a free eight-acre site at the Phoenix Park racecourse development for cost of €440 million, over €210 million less than if it were built on the site of the Mater Hospital.
The firm has submitted what it says is a detailed costing exercise to the review group set up to examine alternative sites to the Mater Hospital after An Bord Pleanála rejected the development of the hospital there.
Around 15 locations in the greater Dublin area have since been proposed as alternatives including St James’s Hospital, a greenfield site near Dublin Airport, the site of the Coombe hospital, Tallaght and a revised development at the site of the Mater.
The developers for the site at the Phoenix Park claim they have the land zoned for development and that there is previously attained planning permission granted for a nine storey development.
According to a website for the Phoenix Park Racecourse development this was to include new homes, a new 18 acre park, a new railway station, new shops, restaurants, leisure facilities and a creche for the area around Castleknock.
The developers say they could deliver the project by 2016 and say that there would be ample space for car parking as well as facilities such as the train station and Dublin Zoo.
“The accessibility of the site to both the city an the rest of the country, beside the M5 and on the N3 (Navan Road) with the Quality Bus Corridor and its own existing train station offers an attractive alternative to the co-location option,” said Denis Doherty, a spokesman for Flynn and O’Flaherty.
A review group examining the various options for the National Children’s Hospital is to make its recommendations to the Minister for Health James Reilly later this month.
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