University Hospital Galway
The tallest buildings on the west side of the river are the hospital's. University Hospital Galway on Newcastle Road, with Merlin Park on the east side of the city, makes up Galway University Hospitals, run by the Saolta group and partnered with the University of Galway across the road. It is the region's Model 4 hospital, which means it is the one that takes everything, around the clock.
Checked against the source on 2026-09-19.
Sulmac at en.wikipedia, public domain via Wikimedia Commons
University Hospital Galway, Merlin Park University Hospital on the 3D model; tap a pin for its page and directions.
From Central to University
The story begins with Galway Central Hospital, finished in 1924. Thomas Joseph Cullen designed the replacement built on the same site, which opened as Galway Regional Hospital in 1956; it became University College Hospital Galway in 1993 and University Hospital Galway in 2006.
What it does
As the Saolta Model 4 hospital it provides 24-hour emergency medicine, acute medicine and surgery, critical care, maternity, neonatal and paediatric care, cancer services, laboratories and radiology, and tertiary referral services for the whole group. It is the designated supraregional centre for cancer and cardiac care and one of the main academic teaching hospitals in the country. In 2023 it opened an 8,000-square-metre radiation oncology unit costing 70.7 million euro, the biggest building project in its history, with equipment that targets tumours far more precisely.
Hard years
The hospital has had its controversies. In October 2012 Savita Halappanavar died after a miscarriage here, and the inquest's verdict of medical misadventure in April 2013 fed the protests that changed Ireland's abortion law; a 2014 review by Ernst and Young found significant progress on the HIQA recommendations that followed. In the first four months of 2014, 1,348 patients were recorded on trolleys, and the mayor Pádraig Conneely, then chair of HSE West, accused management of moving too slowly. The model on this page pins both hospitals; the pharmacies and GP surgeries category lists what is nearest.
Questions people ask
Where is University Hospital Galway?
When was University Hospital Galway built?
Does UHG have a 24-hour emergency department?
Written from Wikipedia, "University Hospital Galway" (CC BY-SA 4.0), read on 2026-09-19, and from the OpenStreetMap places on the model. Nothing has been added from memory; follow the source for its footnotes.