Aengus Ó Snodaigh
Question:136. Deputy Aengus Ó Snodaigh asked the Minister for Health the plans for the soon to be vacated children's hospitals at Temple Street and in Drimnagh; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [4445/26]
View answerThursday, 22 January 2026
Questions (136)
Written answers
The National Children’s Hospital Ireland (NCHI) is a much-needed investment in healthcare services for our children and young people which is now in the final stages of construction.
Once NCHI is open and fully operational, the three existing children’s hospitals at Temple Street, Crumlin and the paediatric inpatient unit at Tallaght will close, as will the current Ronald McDonald House Charities’ (RMHC) family accommodation unit in Crumlin. Children’s Health Ireland’s (CHI’s) Urgent Care Centres at Tallaght and Connolly will continue to provide ambulatory care for children from the Greater Dublin Area.
Following CHI’s move to the NCHI and decommissioning of Temple Street, the building will revert to the ownership of the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital.
The Children’s Health Act 2018 provided for creation of CHI. Under that legislation, the board of Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital Crumlin voluntarily transferred its assets and liabilities to the new entity, CHI. As such, the Crumlin hospital campus transferred to CHI upon its creation.
In May 2024, Government noted that Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown, and the current site of CHI at Crumlin had been identified to be brought forward into the planning phase for two new ambulatory elective treatment centres in Dublin. These are in addition to those sites previously identified in Galway (Merlin Park University Hospital) and Cork (St Stephen's Hospital, Glanmire).
Since then, work has been ongoing to consider how an ambulatory elective treatment centre might be incorporated into the Crumlin campus, following the decant of CHI services to NCHI. Demand modelling and validation are underway, along with the assessment of current and planned infrastructure for ambulatory care in this catchment area to underpin the scope and scale required.