James Connolly Memorial Hospital is to be renamed Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown and will get extra funding of €10.7 million, the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children announced today.
Mr Lenihan was speaking at the official opening of a new €96 million Health Service Executive development at the hospital.
The new development includes a new Accident and Emergency Unit, operating theatres, surgery facilities and an intensive care unit. An extra 145 new full-time posts have been approved for the hospital.
A spokesman for the hospital said the name change was being implemented to recognise how much the hospital had changed since it opened as a sanitorium in the 1950s. It is now one of Dublin's acute general hospitals as well as a major teaching hospital.
Mr Lenihan said: "I believe that the time is indeed right to change the name of the hospital so that we can visibly mark the momentous changes that have taken place here over the last half century," he added.
The hospital currently has 379 beds, including 110 extended care beds, and a further 58 beds will be added when as it is fully commissioned over the next 12 to 18 months bringing the total number of beds to 437.
Activity at the hospital's new A&E Unit is expected to grow by as much as 20 per cent in 2005.
Mr Lenihan said the addition of a fifth bed in the Intensive Care Unit and the addition of an extra bed in Coronary Care as well as the provision of 20 extra day beds was good news for patients and would result in greater numbers receiving treatment and care.
Ms Maureen Windle, Chief Officer, Health Service Executive - Northern Area, said she was confident that the hospital was well positioned to meet future challenges, including requirements for new ways of working, and to continue to provide excellent service to its catchment area population in the years ahead.