• Urges Government to define healthcare as critical infrastructure in latest action plan
   
• ‘For too long, patients and the healthcare staff who treat them have been forced to endure inadequate conditions in archaic facilities around the country’

Monday February 16, 2026. The Vice President of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has said that the decision of An Coimisiún Pleanála to reject plans for a €100 million extension to the Rotunda Hospital is “short-sighted and regrettable” at a time when the State should be utilising its resources to the full to improve our substandard healthcare infrastructure.

Prof Matthew Sadlier, who is also Chair of the IMO's Consultants' Committee, added that healthcare needed to be defined as critical infrastructure in the Government’s latest action plan.

He noted that in December 2025, the ‘Accelerating Infrastructure Report and Action Plan’ was published, defining just three elements as critical infrastructure: electricity network, water and transport infrastructure.

“The decision of An Coimisiún Pleanála to reject this planned extension is short-sighted and regrettable, and will jeopardise the wellbeing of many women and their infant children. The Government has rightly given special status to energy, water and transport in its latest critical infrastructure plan, but it is clear that healthcare infrastructure needs to be added to the list.

“For too long, patients and the healthcare staff who treat them have been forced to endure inadequate conditions in archaic facilities around the country, and this latest decision will perpetuate this dangerous reality for patients of the Rotunda Hospital.

“Our perennial inability to adequately fund and resource our health system has led to a multitude of chronic problems, of which infrastructure is just one. The Government must take action to address the issue of planning in the context of building much needed healthcare infrastructure.”