The Department of Health has downgraded plans for a new, fully resourced, 200-bed elective hospital building at Merlin Park.
Eight years after announcing it, the HSE was expected to apply for planning permission for its long-scheduled day case hospital in early 2026, but is now designing an elective “Care Centre” instead.
In a statement issued on Thursday, February, 19, the HSE contradicted this information, given to Galway West TD, John Connolly, in response to a parliamentary question, that the proposed care centre is a downgrade from a full elective hospital.
"The HSE’s appointed design team are progressing with the design for the Elective Hospital in Galway, and with the aim of lodging a planning application later this year," said a spokesman. "We wish to apologise to Deputy John Connolly for the information provided to him as it did not provide an accurate picture of the development and we have corrected the record directly with him," he added.
The statement also suggests there was never any plan for beds to be included in "Phase 1" of an elective hospital at Merlin Park, but that 300 new beds will come on stream for University Hospital Galway instead. This statement appears to contradict eight years of announcements by various ministers for health, and the original, 2019 Saolta Regional Elective Hospital Scoping Study report, which specified 75 elective inpatient beds, and 125 daycase beds as "indicative capacity" for a new hospital, designed to relieve the city centre site of basic and medium-grade surgeries booked by appointment.
It is understood €1.7 million has already been spent on initial planning and site preparation for an elective hospital.
It is understood €1.7 million has already been spent on initial planning and site preparation for an elective hospital, which may not now go ahead.
Instead, a care centre will be “bolted on” to a new €40 million Surgical Hub currently nearing completion in Merlin Park, which is set to open within 12 months.
In documents seen by the Advertiser, senior officials from Galway University Hospitals say they have had to “refine the scope and budget” for developing Merlin Park University Hospital (MPUH ), forcing them to “leverage existing infrastructure wherever possible”.
Galway West TD, John Connolly (FF ), raised the matter in the Dáil yesterday, and asked junior health minister Mary Butler, standing in for Minister for Health, Jennifer McNeill, why plans for a new 80,000 square metre, 175-day bed hospital, plus capacity for 25 inpatients, had now been sidelined without discussion or debate.
Ms Butler said changes were not a “reduction in ambition” as elective hospitals did not provide overnight beds, and that new surgical hubs planned for Sligo and Letterkenny would add capacity to the region.
“I’m really concerned about progression of that plan,” Connolly warned, pointing out that new facilities on the vast Merlin Park campus were vital for decanting patients from overcrowded University Hospital Galway (UHG ), giving the city centre facility breathing space to upgrade its wards, cancer care centre, laboratories, Emergency Department, Intensive Care Unit, surgical block, dated paediatric and maternity units, and staff training facilities, as part of a 25-year master plan.
“Losing a 200-bed expansion is a significant change,” he responded.
Speaking to the Advertiser, Connolly said he will check if plans for elective hospitals in Dublin and Cork are also scrapped. “If not, I will be going the Taoiseach’s office to see why this is happening just in Galway. It is vital for essential upgrading of the UHG site in town to proceed.”
HSE documents reveal the current intention is to confine a new Merlin care centre, rather than new hospital, to “ambulatory surgical and diagnostic functions” – essentially simple, walk-in, walk-out procedures, rather than those which demand post-operative nursing.
On a visit to Galway last summer, Minister McNeill confirmed that stage-one design of a new elective hospital on the Merlin Park campus was underway, and enabling works on site had already began.
The first phase of a seperate Outpatient Department was built in 2024, which allows patients to avoid attending UHG, the only Category 4 acute hospital in the region which serves a population of 850,000.
Staff recruitment for the MPUH surgical hub is expected to ramp up soon.
Some senior medics in GUH, although welcoming new facilities in MPUH, have expressed concerns that traffic congestion between UHG in Newcastle, and Merlin Park, may affect patient safety, and that “ambulatory surgical function” ambition, rather than full elective hospital status is worrying, because “it means equipment and expertise necessary to be there if things go wrong, or some other issue is discovered during a procedure” may not be present.
“How am I supposed to get between sites for major – sometimes emergency - surgeries in [UHG] on time, and post-operative or outpatient assessments of my patients attending Merlin, when the road is jammers each way?” another consultant surgeon said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We have no flashing sirens, staff shouldn’t discuss and prep patient details on the phone on a public shuttle bus, and the odds of finding parking quickly back here are too long to even consider most days,” he said.
The first surgeon said a “piecemeal approach” to bolting on units to existing Merlin Park buildings may make planning for a new Category 4 hospital there in the future more complicated. “With windfall tax income, this is the time in our country’s history to do it now - properly,” he said. “My patients coming from places like Belmullet are stressed arriving, then leaving to go home again straightaway - there is a health and recovery impact in that.”
EDIT: This story was edited to inclupde a respondse from the HSE on Thursday, February 19
