LIMERICK is to get a separate surgical hub in an attempt to alleviate pressure from stricken University Hospital Limerick (UHL), after Limerick City and County Council gave the go ahead for planning permission on the former Scoil Carmel site.
The HSE had sought permission to demolish existing structures on the former school site and replace them with a surgical hub to help relieve pressures on growing hospital waiting lists for day cases.
The new surgical hub will be a part-two storey and part-three storey building, with capacity for up to 150 patients a day accessing surgeries, by appointment only.
The hub will look after day cases only, and will see patients discharged following their procedure on the same day.
Approved plans will see the installation of four operating theatres in the surgical hub, which will sit on the top of O’Connell Avenue, as well as two minor procedure rooms, with up to 100 staff on site each day to treat patients.
The hub in Limerick will form part of a wider plan to create three surgical hubs in Munster, with a number to come nationally as well, in order to have an impact on day case waiting lists, in advance of the development of regional elective hospitals.
Planners for Limerick City and County Council granted permission for the development subject to 16 conditions.
Among the conditions is that the HSE pay the council €276,888 for public infrastructure and facilities that the development will use.
Other conditions include that a waste management plan be put in place for waste leaving the site, that swift and bat bricks be incorporated into the development to facilitate nesting, and a condition around the hours that work can take place on the site.
