ruled out moving to Connolly Hospital<\/a>, saying the the Rotunda should “stay where it is”.<\/p>\nSpeaking on RT\u00c9’s Morning Ireland, the minister said that she would need a “very, very strong reason to deviate” from the hospital remaining at its current site.<\/p>\n
“Our priority, the Master’s priority, my priority is making sure that we take the correct steps now that are going to deliver appropriate neonatal care for the Rotunda as quickly as possible, and we will take all of the other decisions in the correct sequence after that,” she said.<\/p>\n
Ms Carroll MacNeill said that she was very disappointed with An Coimisi\u00fan Plean\u00e1la’s decision to overturn planning permission, and that she will meet with the Master of the hospital in a fortnight’s time to discuss legal options and further Government support.<\/p>\n
Ms Carroll MacNeill stopped short of saying she would be in favour of a judicial review of the decision, but said she would support the Master in any decision he feels is appropriate.<\/p>\n
“It’s one of the frustrations that the Government has in relation to the planning process generally itself anyway,” the minister said.<\/p>\n
“I would certainly support the Master in making any of the decisions that he needs to make for the hospital and the Government will support him as best appropriate.<\/p>\n
“The Master’s concern, as is my concern, is the delivery of a neonatal unit that is sufficient for the needs of the critically unwell children and the critically premature children that need to use it.”<\/p>\n
Ms Carroll MacNeill said that she disagreed with objections made to the development due to a new wing eroding Dublin’s Georgian history.<\/p>\n
“I would disagree with their analysis and that I think that the public benefit was better served by this. The Rotunda has always been in Parnell Square,” she said.<\/p>\n
Watch: Proposal a ‘de facto replacement for existing Rotunda Hospital’, says Civic Trust <\/p>\n
\n
CEO of the Dublin Civic Trust Graham Hickey has said that the staff of the Rotunda Hospital have been left figuratively and literally “holding the baby” over the planned extension.<\/p>\n
Speaking on RT\u00c9’s Morning Ireland, he said that the plan is incompatible with Parnell Square, which has an “extraordinary landscape”.<\/p>\n
He said “it is a fiasco” as the plans do not match the Government’s National Maternity Strategy.<\/p>\n
Mr Hickey said that this row is a result of failures by successive governments and the Department of Health to properly plan for the co-location of the Rotunda with a Level 4 acute hospital.<\/p>\n
He said that the Rotunda proposal for a “Critical Care Wing” is perhaps a little bit misleading because, he said, it is much more than the Critical Care Wing.<\/p>\n
“This is a de facto replacement for the existing Rotunda Hospital. What is being proposed is a building that is larger than the entire campus of the existing Rotunda Hospital,” he said.<\/p>\n
“In fact, this is a six-level building, if one includes the plant storey up on the roof.<\/p>\n
“And out of those six levels, a single floor is allocated to the intensive care requirements for premature babies and vulnerable babies.<\/p>\n
“The rest of this building is in all but name a standard maternity hospital.”<\/p>\n
Mr Hickey said that Parnell Square was a “conservation area” in terms of planning parlance.<\/p>\n
“So, by any European standard, this is an internationally important civic place in our collective imagination,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Minister for Health has said that she would need “a very strong reason to deviate” from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-302411","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302411","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=302411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}