The health ministers on both sides of the Irish border said there are a number of ideas and projects in paediatric health they want to collaborate on.
Ireland’s Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill and her Northern Ireland counterpart Mike Nesbitt held discussions at the new Children’s Hospital in Dublin on Thursday.
The pair discussed north-south co-operation on health and social care issues.
Ms Carroll MacNeill said the Irish Government is keen to develop paediatric health between the two jurisdictions.
Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill with Health Minister Mike Nesbitt arrive to speak to the media after their meeting at The New Children’s Hospital, Dublin, to discuss north-south co-operation on health and social care issues (PA)
“There are a number of different areas around cardiac care, paediatric care, well being and difficult areas that need shared work, where we can help each other out,” she told reporters.
“We are also looking at what projects in the Shared Island Fund we can look at.
“We have looked at health inequalities and projects that we think we have identified as projects of collaboration, so plenty of work to get on with.”
Mr Nesbitt said that the children of the island “deserve the very best”.
He made the comments as he visited the south Dublin hospital, which is set to be completed in June and expected to be opened to the public next year.
Asked which projects her department is seeking to work on with their colleagues in Northern Ireland, Ms Carroll MacNeill said: “Obviously, Minister Nesbitt and I are at a very early stage in our engagement in relation to that.
“I think certainly from our conversation this morning, we would very much like to see a project on the ground, rather than too much in the way of strategies or single, small infrastructure.
“An idea is in gestation, about something that’s capable of being mobile, capable of reaching different communities, but really targeting the health inequality that, I think is really something that Minister Nesbitt has had a very long standing interest in.
“We’re going to collaborate on that project, and we’ll certainly be looking forward to updating it as we get on with it.”
Ms MacNeill also said she had a “good chat” with officials from the hospital developer BAM.
She said: “I have to say, when you go into the hospital, you see the standard that it is, and it’s really very exciting to see it at this stage. I think 98-99% complete, is what BAM have told me.
General view of The New Children’s Hospital, Dublin, where Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill with Health Minister Mike Nesbitt met to discuss north-south co-operation on health and social care issues (PA)
“I know we’re on track to hand over the hospital at the end of June.
“But nearly more important than that is for CI children’s health Ireland, to get access to it in April, to begin that very significant body of work that needs to be done, to commission labs, to commission rooms, to bring in more equipment.
“There’s some there now, but there’s so much more to do.
“We have a very significant programme around workforce training, making sure that people can come in and see the hospital, people who are going to be working here.
“You know, it is different.
“The rooms are bigger, the rooms in the emergency department, they are bigger.
“It is just a different experience and making sure that everybody has the opportunity to come together.
“This is going to be a digital hospital with electronic health records, but a digital hospital more broadly, and people need the opportunity to be trained on that.
“Internationally, we have commissioning experiences of up to a year.
“We think it’s going to be between six and nine months.
“That’s why we want that early access in April.
“But as you’re aware, we have a constraint around when we can physically move the children, and the best clinical time to do that, I might like it to happen on the first of January, but that might be the right thing for the children, for the sickest children of Ireland at that point, and we have to make sure that we get that exactly right.”
Controversy has surrounded the building of the new National Children’s Hospital, which was originally scheduled to be completed in 2020 with a budget of 650 million euro.
The bill has spiralled to be in the region of 2.2 billion euro, and has been delayed on 14 occasions, four of which occurred last year.
It was confirmed in recent weeks that contractor BAM will also build a new hospital in Belfast.
Asked if he had any concerns about cost overruns, Mr Nesbitt said: “We have had some issues with our maternity hospital on the Belfast site.
“I’m not really interested in looking to the past unless it gives me lessons for the future.
“The future for us is building our new Children’s Hospital, and I’m assured that we’ve got the right people and the right new governance structures in place to make sure that that hospital is delivered as close to on time and on budget as is humanly possible.
“We’ll always have concerns.
“We always need to be very watchful, and our governance structures will be beefed up for this construction.”