BY MICHAEL BRESLIN
It is estimated that 850 construction workers will be required on the new acute hospital for the South West where work is due to start in the Spring of this year.
The project has been costed at £267m and the new, state-of-the-art 312-bed hospital is expected to be completed in 2012.
Listed as a major planning application which secured full planning permission late last month, the hospital will be erected on a 40-acre site about a mile from Enniskillen on the Irvinestown Road. It will be three to four storeys in height, and it will feature a basement level housing an Out Patients Department, an Accident & Emergency Department, operating theatres and laboratories.
The planning application provided for 788 car-parking spaces, employees' accommodation (including a creche), a new roundabout on the Irvinestown Road and a bridge.
Last month, a presentation on the new hospital was made to Fermanagh Councillors by Mary Maguire, the Derrylin-born project director, who was accompanied by Joe Lusby, the deputy chief executive of the Western Health and Social Services Trust.
Ms Maguire reported that of the 850 construction jobs, some 200 would be new, and that training in new skills would be offered to 40-plus apprentices. She said there would be jobs and investment opportunities for sub-contractors and local suppliers.
It was left to Mr Lusby to detail the various specialities which the new hospital would offer. In addition to A & E and a GP Out of Hours' centre, an intensive care unit, a high dependancy unit and coronary care together with acute (emergency) and elective (routine) surgery, the South West Acute Hospital would come equipped with a maternity unit, a day surgery, and a neonatal unit.
Other facilities Mr Lusby listed include - clinical investigations, CT and MRI scanning, a children's centre (in patient, outpatients and assessments), a women's health unit, a pharmacy, mental health liaison, social services, PAM's (professions related to medicine, eg chiropody), an ambulatory unit, medical records, speciality teams, and an education suite.
The variety of wards will cater for medical, cardiology, acute surgery, a combined assessment unit, children, elderly care, stroke patients, patients in for elective surgery and intermediate care.
Fermanagh Ulster Unionist MLA Tom Elliott was among those Councillors who welcomed the planning approval.
He said many people in Fermanagh had worked tirelessly for years to secure acute hospital services for the population of the entire south-west.
"We are pleased progress continues to be made by Michael McGimpsey, the Health Minister and others to ensure a future health provision for south-west," he said.
However, a leading health service union has expressed concerns at the method of how the new hospital will be paid for. Unison is worried that the method, known as, 'private finance initiative' or PFI, will mean that, by the time the hospital is paid for in 30 years' time, it will have reached its shelf life, in other words, that the proposed £267m acute hospital at Enniskillen does not represent value for money for the public purse.
The union, Unison is calling for a review. Benny Cassidy, who is the chairman of the Omagh/Fermanagh branch, reported that Unison had written to the Health Minister, expressing these concerns.
Patricia McKeown, of Unison, said her members wanted the hospital funded by conventional procurement.
She referred to the Assembly's Public Accounts Committee Assembly which concluded that other Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes did not represent best value for money.
"PFI is not the cheapest way," she suggested. It is like building a hospital using your credit card. You are paying enormous interest out year after year.
"If, after 25 years of handing out annual PFI payments, the hospital building is passed to the Trust or the Department, it will be at the end of its life. Meanwhile, health services will still have to be funded and delivered.'
Ms McKeown recalled an earlier NHS proposal that income would be generated through privatisation of catering, laundry and domestic services. This had now been stopped and those services remain part of the health service.
"The PFI scheme, therefore, is no longer viable. What is wrong with the Government borrowing money from banks at competitive interest rates and building the hospital itself?"
But, a Western Health and Social Care Trust and Health Department spokesman insisted the PFI process allowed the Trust to guarantee the new acute hospital was delivered on time and within costs agreed with the private finance company, a consortia of construction companies, financiers and service delivery organisations.
"For PFI projects, approval involves clear demonstration of proving value for public money," she added.
"This has been the case in Trust arrangements and receiving approval from Department of Health and Department of Finance and Personnel."
