The Site for the New Childrens Hospital

Several years ago I was asked by a property developer to project manage the development of a number of sites for him in the Dorset Street area of north Dublin. I knew this developer well and he knew me well and thats why he trusted me with the work. However, at that time I could not understand why anyone would be pumping millions of Euro into Dorset Street, it was hardly an investment area at that time. I asked the developer why he was investing so much money in the area and he told me that because of his friendship with certain politicians he had been given the knod that there was going to be a super hospital built on the site of the Mater hospital. I would later discover that this developer was also well placed on a hospital Board of Directors. I thought nothing more about this until one day a friend of mine said he was hoping to secure a large contract in relation to the building of the new hospital on the Mater site, I said to my friend that the site had not yet been choosen and that international experts were advising that the hospital should be built on a green field site, my friend quickly reached for his phone and spoke directly to a senior government Minsiter. When my friend was finished talking on the phone he assured me that the new hospital would be built on the Mater site, I found all of this extraordinary. Still I was simply a builder not a politician. Anyone who has ever been involved in a big building project will always tell you that it is much easier and cheaper to build from scratch rather than try and turn a pigs ear into a silk purse. Last week when it was announced by the Irish Government that the new hospital would proceed on the Mater site it came as no great surprise, the projects I managed in the Dorset Street area are well and trully finished and much accomadation now awaits the many thousands of staff that will work on the new site. Many will think that the hospital is being built on the Mater site as it is the best location and can deliver best practice in universal cradle to the grave health care, my own thoughts and knowledge are that the site has been choosen to ensure that tens of millions already invested by property developers is not lost and neither is their support for this government.