Lets be real here: The Children's Hospital is a scam

Well it didn't help and no one's suggesting it's the only issue.

Hospitals are never cheap to build but lets put our mess in perspective. Currently the most expensive hospital in the world is the Royal Karolinska Hospital in Stockhom, Sweden. That was completed in 2019 at a cost of Є2.2bn and it has much of the same features of the Childrens Hosptal here in that it is on an awkward city centre site and it is also an extension of an existing hospital.

Now heres the kicker, for its Є2.2 billion the Swedish Childrens Hospital delivered 1,340 beds. Our Є2.5bn (and growing) hospital will deliver the sum total of 474 beds.

Sweden- Є1.6m per bed

Ireland Є5.2m per bed and thats not even including the actual bed and the rest of the fit out, by the time this goose it cooked it is going to be way above that.

Or to put it another way if we had of asked Sweden to build our National Childrens Hospital with 474 beds they could have done it for Є758 million and not the Є2.5 billion+ bill we are now looking at. Thats how big a mess this is compared to what how another European country builds vital infrastructure, Sweden have done it for a third of the cost and thats in a country where wages are high and unions are strong.

The facts above would also beg the question as to why Ireland with a population of 5 million people deem only 474 childrens beds to be sufficient and Sweden with a population of 10 million deem 1,340 beds to be the optimum number to cover all the children in the population for specialist medical care.

You can see where this is going already- the Irish Childrens Hospital will be full to capacity from day one and I can already see the articles now with parents complaining they cant get their child into the National Childrens Hospital becasue there are no beds. All while the canny Swedes have allowed for capacity now and for decades from now.

Its an absolute clusterfcuk, there is no two ways about it. This government is just throwing our money away and then shrugging their shoulders, they and the senior civil servants are absolute incompetents.

Many problems with this project before inflation came into the foray.

The location is an utter disaster for one.

..

https://extra.ie/2024/06/23/news/childrens-hospital-design-flaws

In fairness, they say this visit was 6 months ago and modifications have since been made to address the complaint about the two rooms. Maybe there's a rake of other "design flaws" but they ain't mentioned.

Here is a clip from Independence Day which I think is appropriate for this conversation. The last piece of dialogue is key. "You don't actually think they spend 20,000 dollars on a hammer, 30,000 dollars on a toilet seat do you?".

I reckon some of the funding for the childrens hospital has been covering other expenses. What? God knows, its not better infrastructure, thats for sure. It's not defence related. A slush fund for not entirely publicly-palatable projects, perhaps?

this apparent insistence by consultants for co-location is somewhat less relevant now with the concept of tele-medicine & evolution of robotic surgery. Consultants can evaluate patients, give advice, prescribe, where needed, remotely. We are not back in the 90s.

I work in a dublin hospital and we have just completed a small renovation to an area. Treatment and waiting area etc. Every single part of that had to be wheelchair accessible including at least one bathroom. We have stairs, nope need a lift to ensure wheelchair access. This project cost 100,000 or thereabouts and we couldn't get a paintbrush lifted until it was all checked and double checked by architects, fire officer, builders etc to sign it off

Beggars belief that a project this size just seems to run along with no accountability

Yeah. I believe it's amazing. The location is where more children live in Ireland than anywhere else in the country, it's also where the majority of the workforce live, many without cars & reliant on public transport, cycling & walking.

Over time I started a couple of threads re consultants etc failing to use newer tech resources. I heard it right from the mouth of one quiet guy at the forefront. Basically he said, at a conference which I attended, that majority of radiologists simply will not adopt use of AI, which can assist in pointing out abnormalities. The initial flagging of potential more subtle brain lesions is identified by AI, the trained radiologist then zooms in and identifies it as real or an artifact.

The refusal by various radiologists to entertain AI is a bit alarming, but it is happening. A lot of consultants are old school luddites.

No wonder the place is nightmare with traffic to get to if there's so many people living right on top of the hospital.

Yeh but let’s keep voting FFFG, for the craic

And that's why nothing will change for those you are not you.

The poor, the homeless, the sick and so on.