There is \u201coutrage\u201d within Government over the overturning of permission for a critical care extension to the Rotunda maternity hospital in Dublin.<\/p>\n
Planning permission was granted in July for the four-storey extension by Dublin City Council, but was overturned by planning body An Coimisi\u00fan Plean\u00e1laon Friday.<\/p>\n
Master of the Rotunda Hospital, Professor Sean Daly, said the decision was \u201cincredibly disappointing\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really not sure that the correct weight was put on the clinical need of this building,\u201d he told RT\u00c9 Radio.<\/p>\n
He said the age of viability was currently at 22 weeks, or 18 weeks before babies should be born.<\/p>\n
This created additional \u201cchallenges\u201d as there was a longer period of time when medics were caring for \u201cvery fragile\u201d babies who could be exposed to infection or other issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the moment in the Rotunda, we have a neonatal unit in which we care for babies who weigh as little as a pound and are born, as I said, 17-18 weeks early, all in one room,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo there is literally a meter between one baby and the other. This is not 21st century neonatal care.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said part of the reason for the planning permission being overturned was because of 2015 plans to co-locate the Rotunda with Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown, which Mr Daly said he did not believe would happen, and had said so in his submission to An Coimisi\u00fan Plean\u00e1la.<\/p>\n
He said hospital officials were examining their options, which include a judicial review or submitting a smaller version of the extension on the same site.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there is outrage in Government and indeed on the opposition benches about this decision. It makes no clinical sense,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
T\u00e1naiste and Finance Minister Simon Harris said he had spoken to Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill about the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m beyond disappointed. I\u2019m kind of angry in relation to this \u2013 I think that\u2019s the Government\u2019s overall sense too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGovernment will look at all of the options here to get this project back on track.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is \u201coutrage\u201d within Government over the overturning of permission for a critical care extension to the Rotunda…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-300292","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}