Statement re: new children’s hospital from Professors of Paediatrics, Owen Smith, UCD, Eleanor Molloy, TCD and Alf Nicholson, RSCI

June 22, 2016: We, the three Professors of Paediatrics in three of the Dublin universities, collectively endorse the campus at St James’s Hospital (SJH) as the right location for the new children’s hospital, which also accommodates paediatric academic and research facilities. This campus is unparalleled in the academic opportunity it presents not just for paediatrics but the wider health system.

The speciality of paediatrics already collaborate across the universities. The research community in the existing three children’s hospitals have already well recognised research capabilities and by tri-locating these with SJH and the Coombe Women’s and Infants University Hospital, who both have a strong record in healthcare research, will create a cadre of research capabilities that will offer the potential to make real changes, new treatments and possible new cures to the most complex diseases experienced by our children, mothers and adults for future generations.

-ENDS-