Why Ireland’s Children’s Hospitals Are Failing Families (And What’s Being Done)

Ireland's New Children's Hospital budget has exploded from €650 million to over €2 billion, making it one of the world's most expensive hospitals per bed. But the financial disaster is just the tip of the iceberg – systemic failures throughout Ireland's paediatric healthcare system are putting young patients at risk every day, according to experts.

If you're a parent in Ireland, these issues directly affect your family's access to safe, quality healthcare. Business development experts who specialise in healthcare crisis management have been analysing the situation and share insights on what's really happening behind the scenes.

Over 500 children got recalled for procedures they might not have needed

The safety problems in Ireland's children's healthcare system are scary. Children's Health Ireland had to call back over 500 kids because of hip procedures that might not have been necessary. Even worse, doctors used medical devices that weren't approved during spinal surgeries on children.

When bad things happened to patients, hospitals often didn't investigate properly. This means the same mistakes kept happening to other families because no one fixed the real problems.

Children who needed specialist care were never moved to centres of excellence, despite national policies

It has been revealed that, despite national policy, a group of children with specific birth defects born before 2008 were never moved to specialist centres that could deliver appropriate treatment. Many parents only learned about this years later, when it was too late to get their children the best treatment during the most important early years.

Nobody was held accountable when things went wrong

The most frustrating part for Irish families is that no one has been held responsible for these failures. When problems happen, there's no clear person or department in charge of fixing them.

This basically means that the same issues keep affecting more families because there's no system to stop them from happening again.

Getting help means finding the right experts

With all these existing problems, many people worry about whether Children's Health Ireland can properly run the New Children Hospital, set to open in Dublin in 2026. The same management issues causing the current problems are likely to affect the new facility too.

Some healthcare crisis management experts have looked at these kinds of problems to find solutions before the situation worsens further. One example is Paraic Bergin, who has more than 20 years' experience in senior hospital management in Ireland and abroad, and who has looked at the current crisis from all angles, from how money gets spent to how patient safety works.

Want to understand more about how healthcare crisis analysis works and what steps to take to start fixing these broken systems? There are specialists who can break down these complex problems and show what needs to change in Ireland's children's healthcare system!