THE NATIONAL MATERNITY HOSPITAL at Holles Street is to relocate in a €150 million move.
A new facility is to be built on the same campus as St Vincent’s University Hospital, at Elm Park in Merrion, Dublin 4.
The Department of Health said the existing facility would need €25 million in short-term works if the facility was to remain at its current location, part of which dates to the mid-1700s.
Announcing the move, health minister James Reilly said the new facility could assure mothers and babies of the best quality care “in a state-of-the-art, custom-built, modern healthcare facility”.
The Department said the relocation would address a recommendation from an independent KPMG report, compiled in 2008, which had recommended that maternity hospitals in Dublin should be located close to adult acute services.
The Master of Holles St, Dr Rhona Mahony, said the existing building – which has not received a major extension since the 1960s – was no longer fit for purpose, and the new facility was urgently needed.
“The relocation of NMH will address this need and will achieve our strategic aim of close location with St Vincent’s University Hospital,” she said.
The chief executive of the St Vincent’s Hospital Healthcare Group, Nicky Jermyn, said the hospitals had collaborated closely for many years in anticipation that they would ultimately share the same physical space.
The main hospital building at Holles Street dates to the 1930s, but the complex has seen little substantial expansion in the last half-century – while the number of births it handles has increased by 50 per cent in the last two decades.
€150 million has been allocated from the HSE’s capital plan to allow the project to proceed.
The new facility will be designed to accommodate up to 10,000 births a year – an amount roughly equivalent to the numbers currently delivered at Holles St – and will include a neo-natal intensive care unit, a high dependency unit and a special care baby unit.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say