Jack and Jill supports the group of parents, grandparents, children and child health professionals who believe that the decision to locate the new National Paediatric Hospital at the Mater is not in the best interest of the Children of Ireland. You can register your support for reviewing the location of the site for the new National Paediatric Hospital by logging on The New Children’s Hospital Website
Letter sent by Jonathan Irwin to the Irish Times Editor on the 6th September 2010
Dear Madam
Following on from Julie O’Neills heartfelt letter (3/9/10) I find it frightening to see the plans for the National Children’s Hospital at the Mater rumbling ahead largely unchallenged except for a few brave professional voices such as Maurice Neligan and Fin Breathnach. The purpose of my letter is to ask, or rather politely insist, that the Department of Health take stock and properly review the Mater location, before we pass the point of no return.
I started the Jack & Jill Foundation in 1997 based on my family’s personal experience with our son Jack who was brain damaged and who was himself no stranger to hospitals. Since then, we have supported 1,300 families around the country with home nursing care, with 322 families under our wing right now. So I feel know what I am talking about when it comes to caring for fragile babies and the regular dashes our families make to hospital in crisis situations. In fact, my nurses tell me that with the exception of a few parents who live in Dublin many of our families are greatly distressed at the thought of trying to find The Mater and struggling through the maze of one way streets to get there in an emergency. We are conducting more formal research with those families over the next month to back this up.
Indeed, with the well being of Irish children over the next 100 years in mind, it is baffling to me that we are not having an open debate on the location of the new National Childrens Hospital. The hospital development research team interviewed my nurses about their views on this subject some years ago and it seems someone wasn’t listening. Now our nurses, who cover every county in Ireland, are hearing complaints from traumatised and tired parents, who have to take trips into hospital with their child twice or three times a month, about the Mater location and the fact that it simply doesn’t work for them and then questioning why it can’t be located on the M50 ring road.
Please, please, let’s all ask the difficult questions before it’s too late.
Yours
Jonathan Irwin
Founder & CEO of the Jack & Jill Children’s Foundation
I agree it would be easier for people to get to if it was located outside the city centre near the m50 somewhere. I actually work at our lady’s hospital, crumlin with euro car parks and most of the patients do come from outside dublin and beyond. Some of the parents have expressed their concerns to me about the proposed location of the new childrens hospital and i totally agree with them that it would make sense to be located outside the gridlocked one way streets of dublin city.