17.01.20
We couldn’t have asked for a bigger infrastructure project to come in and make such a difference for our community.
Joe Donohoe, Fatima United Community Group
As the storeys of the new National Children’s Hospital rapidly rise over Rialto, the new state of art medical facility, which will dramatically transform lives across the country, is really beginning to take shape. However the development, the largest single infrastructure project in the State, is already helping to transform lives closer to home.
The NCH’s innovative Community Benefit Programme is providing jobs and skills to local people, assisting a range of local community development projects, raising aspirations among young people living in the area in close partnership with local schools and helping to drive regeneration and renewal in the south west inner city.
When it opens in 2023, the new Children’s Hospital Ireland will be the largest pediatric facility in Ireland offering services on a national scale. The hospital will employ over 4,000 people and will see millions of individual visits each year. It’s already creating jobs and drawing investment to Dublin 8 and revitalising surrounding neighbourhoods.
The hospital has a pioneering Community Benefit Clause that seeks to embed community and social gains at every stage of the process from construction to operation. Learn more about the outcomes of the programme to date:
Two More Years of Work Ahead
The progress of construction of the hospital accelerated in 2019 and work to build the form of the building will continue through this year. The external walls or skin of the hospital will start to appear in 2021 and the main construction will be completed by mid-2022. At that stage the hospital will be transfered to the new Children’s Health Ireland, the ultimate manager of the new facility to begin the work of the internal fit-out. The new facility will finally open in 2023. It will bring together the three existing children’s hospitals at Temple Street, Crumlin and Tallaght into a world class, fully digital hospital.
