‘Friends’ say Covid-19 won’t hit MRI plans

The Friends of Mullingar Hospital are optimistic that the Covid-19 outbreak won’t have an impact on the new MRI scanner planned for the Midlands Regional Hospital, Mullingar.

“I am given to understand it is happening in the background, and that the Covid-19 crisis shouldn’t have any implications – unless the government completely tightens up with money at the end of the year,” John McGrath, of the Friends group told the Westmeath Examiner this week.

A major public fundraising campaign was held to meet the cost of purchasing the technology, and the agreement reached with the HSE was that it would fund the cost of the building to house it.

“As far as I know, what’s happening at the moment is – if what’s due to happen happens on time – is we should be going to tender in August or September and have a contractor on site in November or early December,” said Mr McGrath, addressing the question of the construction element of the project.

“The final contract documents are being drawn up at present.”

Because it is a large project, it will have to be advertised across Europe to allow potential internationally-based firms tender to build the premises.

Mr McGrath said that at this point, he believes the situation in which the country currently finds itself will not have any implication for the progression of the project.

“Then again, the way this is changing day on day, you just don’t know.”

The public campaign raised €950,000, but the Friends group won’t be sure what the eventual purchase price will be until they’ve put the supply of the machine out to tender, which they expect to do early next year.

“We have left our account open in case anybody wants to give us further support because we don’t actually know what it will cost: €950,000 was our estimate when we started fundraising three years ago.

“If we do end up with anything over we have plenty of other projects around the hospital that we can see the money for.”