Some 500 nurses at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, have expressed concern at the plan to site the new national children's hospital on the campus of the Mater hospital.
Their intervention in the row over the selection of the Mater as the site for the new hospital could be an indication that large numbers of staff will resist any attempt to move them to the new hospital if it is built at the planned location.
A letter written by the nurses at the hospital last week and seen by The Irish Times states that they believe the Mater hospital "is located in a highly inaccessible part of the city centre".
They say many parents currently attending Crumlin with sick children "have complained to us that they would find it extremely difficult getting to the Mater site and most would prefer if they could avoid driving into the city centre". Furthermore they say their views about the suitability of the Mater site have not been sought.
"We are promised a world-class children's hospital but what appears to be happening is that we are being offered fewer beds, less space and poorer facilities on the new site . . . and this could result in the independence of the children's hospital being compromised," their letter to a member of the Crumlin hospital management team stated.
The letter, signed by the majority of the hospital's nurses, emerges just two weeks after a report from the board of Crumlin hospital called for a review of the Mater-site decision.
The board urged the Health Service Executive and the Department of Health to reconsider the possibility of building the hospital, into which Dublin's three existing children's hospitals are to be merged, on a greenfield site where there would also be room to accommodate a maternity hospital and an adult hospital.