THERE WON’T BE enough nurses to staff the new National Children’s Hospital when it opens, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has said.

If the hospital opens as projected – after years of delay – in 2026, it could have as many as 300 fewer nurses than it needs to run at full capacity.

Phil Ní Sheaghdha, general secretary of the INMO, says it’s a conservative estimate, and that the HSE is running out of time to avoid a severe staff shortage.

“The current regime of annual budgets and determining how many nurses or midwives you can employ on a yearly basis goes against best practice in workforce planning, because to recruit a nurse or a midwife, with the best will in the world, [it] is going to take you about six months,” she said.

“You have to be planning years out.

“For example, if you look at the Children’s Hospital, when it opens, we know they won’t have sufficient staff because they haven’t done the groundwork in a timely manner. So that is going to be a problem.”

The hospital is planning to provide services such as neonatology – the care of newborn babies – which currently is only available in maternity hospitals.

However, Ní Sheaghdha says the service is already understaffed, raising questions over where the new hospital will get the specialists.

“They would need to start recruiting those staff now and then train those staff in the specialty. That hasn’t happened.”

Ní Sheaghdha was speaking at the INMO’s annual conference which is taking place in Wexford this week.

Around 350 members are meeting to vote on what positions and steps the organisation should take on issues such as staff shortages, as well as the aging workforce, housing, and staff and patient safety.

Asked whether patients are dying due to long waits and understaffing, the general secretary said: “Yes.”

“All of the research shows that if you’re on a trolley, for example, for longer than six hours, most certainly that affects mortality.

“If you had enough staff, you could open additional ward areas, appropriate ward areas, so the patients would not be cared for on trolleys.”

Ní Sheaghdha said that, for elderly patients, this not only affects their outcome, but their independence.

You can be independent attending hospital and [leave] rendered a dependent as a result of a period on a trolley.

The HSE said: “Staff work hard to do all they can to see patients as quickly as possible and regret that anyone might experience a long wait for care.

“The HSE has and continues to work with the Health Regions and hospitals to minimise the numbers of patients on trolleys. On a daily basis, regardless of season, the Health Regions optimise capacity to meet demand from both scheduled and unscheduled care.”

Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeil said last month in response to a parliamentary question that “great progress” is being made in reducing the number of patients on trolleys nationwide.

“There was a significant reduction in the cumulative daily 8am trolley count in 2024, with 13,000 fewer patients waiting (down 11%) when compared to 2023,” she said.

“Equally, fewer patients experienced long waits in ED’s in 2024, with the number of patients waiting more than 24 hours in ED’s nationally falling by nearly 4% compared to 2023.”

The minister added that the reduction is despite a “significant increase” in the number of patients presenting to emergency departments, particularly those aged 75 years and older.

New hospital tensions

In February, 12 paediatric surgeons wrote a letter to the chair of the board of Children’s Health Ireland, expressing “significant concerns” around staffing levels within the new hospital.

The surgeons in the department of paediatric surgery and urology across the group said there was a risk to the provision of safe and sustainable surgical services within the new hospital.

They say that the national model of care for paediatric surgery “clearly outlines” the need for 17 paediatric surgeons by 2028, however this has not been included in the definitive business case for the new Children’s Hospital.

The hospital was meant to open this June, and the HSE says it still will, but The journal understands that the “operational commissioning” phase will take at least six months. 

When Jennifer Carroll MacNeill took over as health minister, she was told by the Department that moving patients from the numerous children’s hospitals cannot be undertaken in winter due to “clinical risks”. 

It is understood that spring 2026 is now seen as the optimum time for the large scale logistical plan. 

The relationship between the construction firm BAM, the board overseeing the hospital construction and the state has soured over the years over the delayed project. 

The board overseeing the hospital’s development accused BAM last year of having a “complete disregard for sick children”.

There are reports that BAM is seeking an additional €100m in costs, which Tánaiste Simon Harris said the State will “robustly push back” against.