The Government has pledged to implement a blend of all three options in the HIQA report to address overcrowding at University Hospital Limerick, including securing a site for a new hospital in the midwest.
HIQA recommended three options: expanding capacity at University Hospital Limerick, adding a second site in close proximity to the Dooradoyle campus or building a new hospital with a second emergency department.
Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill made the announcement after receiving approval at today’s Cabinet meeting, which she said will inform investment and give short, medium and long-term plans for healthcare services for the people of the region.
The minister said current plans to increase capacity at UHL will deliver up to 306 beds and will progress Option A.
She said, with additional beds planned for other Model 2 Ennis, Nenagh and Saint John’s Hospitals in the region, this would represent 420 additional beds in the region from 2024 to the end of the Acute Hospital Inpatient Bed Capacity Expansion Plan in 2031.
Minister Carroll MacNeill, speaking on RTÉ’s News at One, said while extra capacity will be developed at UHL additional measures are needed to ease pressure on the hospital.
“We will deliver extra beds, but at the same time, we are also trying to remove services from the Dooradoyle site that don’t need to be there,” she said.
The minister said they are developing a surgical hub which will remove about 10,000 procedures away from University Hospital Limerick into a surgical hub.
“So the sort of scheduled procedures that you might expect that don’t need to be in an acute hospital, which should be for very, very, very sick people or people who have experienced a trauma,” she said.
To progress Option B, the minister said she will mandate the HSE to secure an available appropriate adjacent site, establish a project board and further explore the opportunities for decanting services away from the main Dooradoyle campus.
She said there is ongoing work by the HSE to identify a site in the general Limerick area but would not drawn further on the matter. “I don’t want to say something that then has a price implication for a particular site,” she said.
Minister Carroll MacNeill said consideration will also be required for what services can be “relocated or decanted” to Ennis, Saint John’s and Nenagh to decongest the Dooradoyle site.
To progress Option C – a new hospital – the minister and the Department of Health will “develop a strategic plan for the incremental strategy of organising services and investment in healthcare services in the Mid West”.
“The midwest needs another hospital facility at scale, and that we will be examining as we move ahead with the purchase of a site, looking at all of the flexibility as to how we might deliver option C,” she said.
“Now that is a conversation I need to have with clinicians over time. That is a conversation I need to have with cabinet.”
She said these steps will inform plans for accelerated infrastructure, bed capacity and hospital capacity in the region that will be outlined in a subsequent Memorandum for Government to be brought in 2026.