The Health Service Executive (HSE) has established a special group of officials to draw up detailed plans for the development of the new national children's hospital.
The group will also determine where the proposed new urgent care paediatric treatment centres will be established in Dublin and it will examine the considerations involved in co-locating a maternity hospital alongside the new children's facility.
Earlier this year the Government decided that the new children's hospital should be developed on the site of the Mater hospital in Dublin. The HSE said yesterday that one of the immediate tasks of the new transition group would be to finalise arrangements for the transfer of the site at the Mater "unencumbered and at no cost to the State".
The group, which includes officials of both the HSE and the Department of Health, will also consult relevant stakeholders and outside experts to determine the number and locations of the planned urgent care centres.
A consultancy report for the HSE earlier this year proposed that two or three A&E facilities or urgent care centres be established at strategic locations to support the new children's hospital.
The HSE said that the group would also make recommendations on the range of services to be provided by the proposed urgent care centres and on their relationship with the national children's hospital.
"Urgent care centres are typically either stand-alone or attached to an adult facility. They do not have in-patient children's beds and are staffed by general paediatricians", the HSE stated.
It said that the new group would also determine the relationships to apply between the new national children's hospital and other centres such as the Mater hospital, other Dublin teaching hospitals where specialist paediatric services are currently provided, and the hospitals outside the capital where services for children are also currently available.
The HSE said that the group would make a recommendation to Minister for Health Mary Harney on the establishment of a new body which would have responsibility for designing, building and commissioning the new children's hospital. It said it was intended that this proposed development board for the hospital would be in place by the end of the year. It also envisaged that the work of the transition group would be completed by the end of this year, "at which time it is anticipated that the new hospital will be progressed to completion by the new development board".
