The leaders of the main Protestant churches in the State have urged the Government to consider basing the promised new national children's hospital across two sites.
The Cabinet has already agreed to building the new children's hospital - into which the three existing children's hospitals, at Crumlin, Temple Street and Tallaght, are due to be merged - on the campus of the Mater hospital on Dublin's northside. The Mater is a Catholic ethos hospital.
Protestant church leaders who met Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Tánaiste Mary Harney at Government Buildings yesterday told them there was no reason why part of the new structure could not be based at Tallaght hospital.
"We believe a single governance arrangement for a national children's hospital based on two sites, northside and southside, to serve the size of Dublin, the demands of Dublin, is justified," Church of Ireland primate and Archbishop of Armagh Most Rev Robin Eames said after the meeting.
"What we were there to do was to say, look, how can the ethos of Tallaght produce a real contribution to the future of children's and other healthcare in the State."
Locating the new national children's hospital at one site only in north Dublin was "not in all honesty to the good and for the good of the healthcare of children", he said.
"We have expressed emphatically the interest that we all have in the welfare of providing adequate, advanced and, we hope, ahead-of-time medical facilities for the children of Ireland. We are totally committed to this.
"There is nothing secular in terms of sectarianism or anything else in our denominational approach to this. We want the best possible treatment for children."
The archbishop said the Government leaders had also been urged to develop a maternity hospital at Tallaght, to provide 200 more public beds for adults there and support a number of academic developments at the hospital. These were things, he believed, they should not have to plead for.
The meeting with Mr Ahern and Ms Harney, the archbishop said, was very useful and constructive. "We have had an unequivocal assurance by the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste that we have no grounds for fears that the charter of the Tallaght hospital is in any way being eroded."
He said Mr Ahern had promised to respond quickly to the proposal put to him by the delegation, which also included the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Rev John Neill; the moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the Ven Rev Dr David Clarke; and the outgoing president of the Methodist Church in Ireland, the Rev Desmond Bain.
The Most Rev John Neill said a major part of the delegation's concern was the new children's hospital and the care of children in the future.
"We are very concerned also that the Tallaght hospital should be seen as a major tertiary teaching hospital within the State where the contribution of the Protestant community to healthcare could be clearly seen. And the ethos of Tallaght hospital is very clear, that all that is lawful within the laws of the State must be worked out in a doctor-patient relationship without other interference, and we are very concerned that this particular aspect of the ethos of medical care should be provided for within the State and that our contribution lies in that area," he said.
"We are also very concerned about the continuous downgrading of Tallaght hospital . . . we are concerned about hospital beds . . . without hospital beds, hospital services cannot be provided."