With the country up in arms about overcrowded A&E departments and lengthy waiting lists for operations, it seemed unlikely that an Irish hospital would receive an international plaudit anytime soon. Until last week, that is, when Temple Street Children's University Hospital was named as one of the 100 best places to work in Europe.

Temple Street is the first publicly funded hospital to be nominated for the award. The children's hospital was chosen from more than 1,000 European workplaces by the Great Place to Work Institute Europe, and was honoured at a high-profile ceremony in Berlin.

Staff at the 134-year-old north Dublin hospital nominated Temple Street for the award for a second year in a row, citing a series of initiatives run by the hospital.

These include flexible working hours, personal and professional development programmes, health promotions and screenings, the hospital's Recognition of Excellence Awards, and its annual Diversity Week.

"I feel the staff are listened to and appreciated by management," says Michelle Cotter, a 33-year-old occupational therapist who nominated Temple Street for the awards.

"There's a sense that if I have an idea about improving patient care, there are people who will listen."

Staff at Temple Street also benefit from lunchtime yoga, pilates and weight-loss classes, while a variety of dishes from around the world are served in the canteen during Diversity Week.

Almost 10 per cent of the hospital's staff were born outside Ireland.

"I'm doing yoga now, which is great as it's hard to get yourself to do these things outside of work," says Cotter. "I've worked here six and a half years, which is the longest I've ever worked in a place. That, in itself, says a lot, I think."

Temple Street was set up in 1872 to care for the poor children of Dublin, and is operated by the Sisters of Mercy.

The only inner-city children's hospital in the capital, it provides acute and specialist paediatric services for the 175,000 children in its catchment area, in addition to children from the rest of the State.

It is also a teaching hospital, and is linked to the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and University College Dublin at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

The hospital employs 1,100 staff, including 64 consultants, and has an annual budget of €64 million. Its A&E department is one of the State's busiest, with about 49,000 people attending every year.

But while staff appear content with their workplace and the hospital's facilities have been upgraded in recent years with a new surgical ward, theatre suite and clinical laboratories, many of its facilities are old.

It plans to relocate to the Mater hospital's grounds in a new stand-alone building, giving it the ability to access the larger hospital's high-tech facilities.

To facilitate the new development, the Religious Sisters of Charity and the Sisters of Mercy have set up a new company called Mater and Children's Hospital Development.

The Government has committed €325 million to the planning of the new hospital, and a joint task force established by the Health Service Executive and Department of Health is scheduled to complete a report on the project by the end of this month.

Temple Street was one of just 15 Irish organisations to be named in the list of the top 100 best workplaces in Europe. The others were: Abbott Laboratories Ireland; Airtricity; Brightwater; Clontarf Castle Hotel; Deloitte; DePuy; Diageo; GE Commercial Aviation Services; Google Ireland; Intel; 02 Ireland; PEI, Philips Electronics Ireland and Tourism Ireland.

"I understand that, on a working population basis, we would have expected to take no more than three of the 100 places," Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Micheál Martin said in a statement after the awards ceremony.

"To have 15 organisations listed is a tremendous achievement for Ireland."

Google, which recently announced the creation of 650 more jobs in Dublin, won a special award for best practice in creating a fun place to work.

DePuy and 02 Ireland, meanwhile, ranked amongst the top 10 best workplaces in Europe.

Competitions were held in 14 EU states for each member-state's best workplaces, with the aim of improving work environments in companies, non-profit organisations and state enterprises.

Competing companies had to submit a questionnaire detailing their human resources practices, policies and philosophies, and staff selected at random had to fill out a confidential questionnaire about their experience of working at the organisation.

The Great Place to Work Institute is a US-based research and management consultancy with offices all over the world.

The institute's website defines a good workplace as a place where employees "trust the people they work for, have pride in what they do, and enjoy the people they work with".

More than 140 workplaces in the Republic with a combined workforce of 90,000 took part in the study this year, making it the largest annual labour-force survey undertaken in the State.