Temple St call for Mater complex to go ahead

The medical board of Temple Street hospital last night called on the Government to establish an independent body to determine the future location of complex or tertiary services for children.

The medical board urged that the Health Service Executive (HSE) "step back" from any involvement in the issue.

In a separate development, the medical board of the Mater hospital is understood to have written to Tánaiste and Minister for Health Mary Harney calling on her to allow the planned €500 million redevelopment of its campus - to include a new children's hospital to replace Temple Street - to go ahead.

The board of the HSE will today consider a report from management consultants on whether tertiary paediatric services should be based on a single-hospital campus.

The planned redevelopment of the Mater hospital campus has been effectively put on hold pending a decision by the HSE and the Department of Health on the future of tertiary services for children.

In a statement last night, the medical board of Temple Street demanded that the planned development at the Mater campus be allowed to commence immediately. It also demanded that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern "deliver on his promise of September 26th, 2005, to personally ensure the project would be completed in its entirety".

The board said it was the first time in the history of the State that the building of a children's hospital had been stopped, and it called on the HSE, the Minister for Health and the Taoiseach "to bring to an end the sequence of excuses and delays".

"We demand that an independent body, fair to all service providers, be established to explore the matter of tertiary services and that the HSE step back."

The medical board said that €46 million had already been spent on the Mater/Temple Street project.

It said the new children's facility planned for the Mater complex was a superbly-designed hospital. "It is sited on the Mater campus, a tertiary adult hospital, and will be the largest medical facility in the country capable of offering treatment to everybody. The site is of sufficient size to provide all paediatric tertiary care."

It said the plan for the new children's hospital on the Mater campus would provide smooth transition of care from children into adults "which is crucial in the many life-long conditions that we now treat".

The report of the management consultants to be considered by the HSE board will not determine the location of services for children in Dublin. It will only deal with the issues of whether such tertiary services should be centrally-located or spread among a number of centres.

Earlier last month the chief executive of Temple Street hospital Paul Cunniffe wrote to the HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm criticising the terms of the reference for the consultants' review. He said aspects of these were misleading and understated the role of his hospital.

The chief executive of Tallaght Hospital, which incorporates the National Children's Hospital, Michael Lyons said the weight of international evidence favoured the establishment of specialist services for children on the site of an adult hospital. A HSE spokesman said the review would be published tomorrow.