Connolly for Kids Hospital Campaign

“If the children and their families are stressed, they can't get parking and can't get access to the hospital, then the best clinical outcome already is starting to go out the window”

- Aaron, father of Sophia, a 10-year-old girl with serious life-long illness

Adequate, secure, on-site parking for parents, visitors and staff is essential for the efficient operation of the hospital and the wellbeing of families attending.

Comparison with International Parking Ratios in Children’s Hospitals worldwide:

Colorado, USA: 14 spaces/bed
Boston, USA: 8.8 spaces/bed
Melbourne, Australia: 6.4 spaces/bed
Toronto, Canada: 4.4 spaces/bed
Proposed St James’s Children’s Hospital: 1.3 spaces/bed (not including maternity / future expansion)

Currently many parents leave home with their sick child an hour or two earlier than necessary to allow for traffic and parking. Many parents drive in pairs to the hospital so one can get out with the child at the hospital entrance and the other can then find parking.

In building our new Children’s Hospital, we should strive to alleviate these burdens on families instead of exacerbating them.

Reasons for needing ample parking space:

To allow parents to drive their sick child to the hospital
To accommodate extra cars when parents swap “shifts” at the hospital
To accommodate extra cars for handover between staff on shifts.
To facilitate families & staff at night time when public transport is unavailable or unsafe.
To provide sufficient disabled parking. The Alder Hey in the UK provides one disabled parking space for 22% of beds. This would equate to 103 disabled parking spaces at St James’s.
To provide wide spaces to cater for a child requiring assistance, unloading additional bags and equipment and removing multiple infants safely.
To provide suitable working conditions for dedicated staff and retain highly-qualified talent.
To encourage visitors, as this greatly benefits sick children and parents.

St James’s

Connolly

626 standard spaces for parents & visitors
48 disabled spaces
325 spaces for 3,500 staff

This is the lowest parking-to-beds ratio in any Children’s Hospital built recently across the world.

Additionally, staff from the adult hospital will be able to use the children’s hospital car park, further reducing parking capacity.

Dublin City Council has capped the parking for the entire campus at 2,000 spaces, with no further parking allowed in the future.

Unlimited space for parking

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