Cork University Hospital's long awaited helipad to be operational within a year
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A long-awaited helipad could be operational at Cork University Hospital (CUH) within a year.
The has learned that health chiefs hope construction on the delayed piece of critical infrastructure will start this summer and take up to nine months to complete.
It means CUH, one of the country’s largest hospitals and a level trauma centre for the south, could have an operational helipad by March 2024, more than 20 years after its original helipad was decommissioned.
Planning for the helipad has been in place since July 2019, and almost €2m in funding has been secured to build it, but a series of delays, compounded by the covid pandemic, delayed the long-awaited project for more than two years.
But following a series of questions to the South/South West Hospital Group, a spokesman confirmed the project is back on track.
In a statement, the group said: “Following a number of delays since planning permission was granted, the HSE is pleased to confirm that by the end of March 2023, HSE Estates will issue a tender for the provision of an external provider to deliver the helipad at CUH.
“It is hoped to commence construction by June 2023.
“The project is expected to take six to nine months to complete, and become operational in early 2024.”
CUH has been without a helipad since 2003, when the landing pad which was then located in the south-eastern corner of the hospital campus was decommissioned to make way for a new emergency department.
Construction of a landing pad on the roof of that new building was ruled out at the time on budgetary, aviation, and engineering grounds.
There have been several missed target dates over the years for the delivery of a replacement landing pad.
Aviation consultants subsequently identified a suitable site in the northeastern area of the CUH campus, which is currently used as a staff car park.
The HSE was allocated some €1.8m funding to pursue the project and a planning application was submitted to Cork City Council in late 2018.
Despite objections from some residents who live next to the hospital and close to the proposed flight path, all citing concerns about noise and safety, the project was granted approval, with conditions, in July 2019.
Among the conditions was a restriction on the use of the helipad to emergency patient transfer flights and to organ donation flights, only.
The project includes the installation of a 2m-high acoustic screening barrier on the northern edge of the helipad close to adjoining homes.
But following the outbreak of the covid-pandemic in early 2020, the South/South West Hospital Group said HSE Estates staff had been focused on delivering covid-related infrastructure.
That meant progress “had slowed” on the various infrastructural projects that needed to be advanced first, including the relocation of certain services and topographical features, to facilitate the construction of the new helipad.
The delivery of the helipad requires the construction of a new two-storey staff car park on the western side of the campus to replace the parking spaces which will be lost to the helipad.
The ground-based helipad has been designed specifically to cater for the Coast Guard's S92 aircraft, the Irish Air Corps' AW139, and other helicopter types which are involved in aeromedical services in Ireland.
For several years, these aircraft have been landing on nearby sports pitches, with patients transferred to CUH by ambulance.
The S92 conducted 54 of the 89 helicopter transfers to CUH in 2015, 12 of the 28 transfers in 201, and 16 of the 35 transfers in 2017.