New €50m hospital gets go-ahead
The Government has finally given approval for the construction of a new €50m community hospital and ambulance base in North Galway, it emerged today.
The old Grove Hospital in Tuam has been lying idle since it was closed five years ago and people living in the town and surrounding areas had been forced to travel to Galway for treatment.
Local Independent TD Paddy McHugh said he had received continuous complaints about the lack of a hospital and an ambulance service for the region.
“In the event of an emergency, the ambulance had to travel from Galway city and with the traffic on the N17, it was chaotic. People would die before the ambulance could reach them,” he said.
The Department of Health is due to announce the approval of the Tuam Health Campus project in the Dáil this afternoon.
It will be funded through a private public partnership scheme and is expected to cost around €50m.
Mr McHugh said the decision to give the 60-bed community hospital the go-ahead was a great boost for the region.
“People will be absolutely thrilled. There would have been a fear among some people that this project was never going to happen because what they were used to in this region was losing services.”
Although the hospital will not be ready for use for several years, the Government has allocated €15m to provide an ambulance base for North Galway within the existing Grove Hospital building.
The money will also be used to provide temporary x-ray facilities in another building in the town.
Both services will be transferred to the new purpose-built community hospital when it is ready to open.
The Grove Hospital in Tuam was closed by the Bon Secours Sisters in 2001 and was subsequently bought by the former Western Health Board (WHB) at a cost of €4m.
In 2002, the WHB submitted a plan to the Department of Health to build a 60-bed community hospital with x-ray facilities on the seven acre site, as well as an ambulance base.
In the run up to the 2002 General Election, a large sign was placed in the grounds of the Grove hospital announcing the plan to turn it into a primary care centre.
But this did not assuage the anger in the area about the lack of a definite Government commitment, and it was viewed as a significant factor in the election of Mr McHugh, a former Fianna Fáil councillor who ran as an independent when he failed to get his party’s nomination.
The new community hospital will serve the 7,500 people living in Tuam and around 50,000 people living in the wider catchment area of North Galway and South Mayo.
It is likely to be located in a new building on the existing site, as it is thought the renovation of the old Grove Hospital building would not be financially viable.
A Department of Health spokeswoman confirmed that a statement on allocations from the 2006 capital spending programme would be made in the Dáil this afternoon.
