‘Madness’ to demolish Galway hospital car park that cost €5 million to build
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Aontú TD Paul Lawless said this week that the latest development in relation to the parking facility was “madness”, adding that the ordinary worker would end up footing the bill
Plans to demolish a multi-storey car park at University Hospital Galway, which cost €5.4 million and resulted in 80 fewer spaces than the surface car park it replaced, have been branded “madness” and a “fiasco”.
Galway Live revealed last month that the hospital car park has been earmarked for demolition just 10 years after it was built as part of a masterplan for the redevelopment of the UHG campus.
The 238-space parking facility cost €5.4 million to construct and resulted in 80 fewer car spaces than the surface car park it replaced in 2016. It’s now set to be completely flattened to make way for a seven-storey hospital block.
Aontú TD Paul Lawless said this week that the latest development in relation to the parking facility was “madness”, adding that the ordinary worker would end up footing the bill.
“This is more of the squander and waste and bad planning that has become the hallmark of this Government,” he said.
“The UHG car park fiasco is a prime example of the level of mismanagement that would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.
“Wehn this car park was newly built 10 years ago, it had 80 less car spaces than the previous one, which necessitated the introduction of park and ride facilities for staff at the hospital,” added Mr Lawless.
“It was bankrolled to the tune of 5.4 million and now it’s going to be bulldozed after a decade. It shows the lack of value on taxpayers’ money.
“You wouldn’t spend a fortune on a car park with fewer spaces at your own house, only to demolish it a few years later. It’s madness and the worker is footing the bill,” he said.
The clearance of the controversial multi-storey car park is set to be complicated by the presence of asbestos and unregulated medical waste buried beneath the building, internal documents have revealed.
A geo-environmental review commissioned by the HSE refers to a site investigation that discovered buried hospital waste, asbestos, and residual peat and ash from the hospital’s former peat-fired boilers.
Consulting engineers have warned that material excavated from the site cannot be disposed of as ordinary soil, and will require specialist treatment or transfer to a licensed hazardous waste landfill.
A spokeswoman for the HSE said the masterplan for the hospital represented the largest ever investment in healthcare infrastructure in the region, and a doubling of clinical services at UHG is required.
“This is a long-term programme of work which sets out a phased expansion and reform of the hospital to meet projected healthcare demand to 2045,” she said.
“This will require decanting non-clinical services off the campus to make space for new clinical buildings. It will also ensure that support services are adequately sized and scalable to meet future demand.”