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No money, no co-location

Beacon Medical Group’s co-located hospital at the Mid-West Regional in Limerick is the first in the country to get a final grant of planning permission, after two appeals to An Bord Pleanála – one involving Socialist Party leader Joe Higgins – were both deemed invalid.

However, after months of high-stakes talks, the whole future of Health Minister Harney’s co-location strategy now hangs on events due to unfold over the coming week.

“There are three hospitals that we want to get signed up now,” a HSE spokesperson said. The HSE says it is ‘very, very confident’ that project agreements (PA) for co-located hospitals at St James’s in Dublin and at the Waterford Regional Hospital will be signed very shortly.

The HSE has asked for updates and clarifications from all the consortia but has insisted that the documentation must be finalised by the end of July. The Synchrony consortium has now agreed a date – before the end of August – when it will sign a Project Agreement for St James’s. Synchrony will also post the required €20 million bond with the HSE.

A PA for Sligo, where Mount Carmel Medical Group (MCMG) is the preferred bidder, will certainly take a month longer than at MCMG’s other co-location in Waterford and at St James’s. Beacon would be offered the contract to build these two hospitals, should deals not be signed. Sligo is described as a "disaster of a site", built on top of a hill. The technicalities of joining the proposed and the older parts of the hospital are difficult. The Waterford Co-location Consortium is to build the hospital in that city and MCMG will be the operator there.

An appeal by Mr Michael Gallagher of Limerick against the co-located hospital there was late and an appeal by Mr Tom O’Donoghue of Nenagh – supported in an addendum by Joe Higgins – did not include documentation from the local authority acknowledging a ‘lodgement of observation’, as is required under Section 127 of the Planning Act 2000.

Mr Higgins described the move as ‘contemptible’. “People have serious reasons for objecting,” he said. MCMG’s co-location project at Blanchardstown is several months away from the PA stage. The proposed co-located hospital at Tallaght, where Beacon and Synchrony is even further away. Tenders for Tallaght have not been invited yet. In addition to the €20 million bond guaranteed by the parent company, a non-refundable deposit has to be given to the HSE. The HSE is confident that all the consortia will in fact post the bonds. The other two Beacon hospitals are at Beaumont and CUH, where the €20 million bonds have also been lodged.

Posted in Planning and Development, Private Healthcare on 25 July 2008
Tags: co-location