Parts of the State's largest children's hospital, Our Lady's in Crumlin, would not pass a hygiene inspection, a consultant at the Dublin hospital claimed yesterday.
Consultant haematologist Prof Owen Smith said there were just three toilets for 25 children in the oncology (tumour) ward, where there were immuno-suppressed children in danger of picking up infections.
Patient care "across the board was being compromised", he added.
His comments came at the publication in Dublin of an opinion poll commissioned by a parents group lobbying for improved facilities at the hospital, which is the national centre for the treatment of children with cancer and cardiac problems. Some 40 per cent of admissions to the hospital come from outside the Eastern Regional Health Authority Area.
The New Crumlin Hospital Group's poll showed 78 per cent of 1,200 adults surveyed across the State believed the hospital was in need of greater levels of Government funding.
Furthermore, 56 per cent felt it should be considered ahead of other hospitals for Government funding.
The poll was carried out by Behaviour & Attitudes in May, before the public outcry over the Róisín Ruddle case. Two-year-old Róisín Ruddle from Limerick died within hours of being sent home from the hospital after her heart surgery was postponed. An inquiry into the circumstances surrounding her death is ongoing.
Mr Karl Anderson, chairman of the New Crumlin Hospital Group, said the results of the poll endorsed his group's constant calls on the Government for the complete redevelopment of the hospital.
A project group has been appointed to plan the hospital's redevelopment but funding has not been committed to the project. Neither has a timetable for the project been published and Mr Anderson called on the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, to honour a commitment he made in February to publish same.
Mr Anderson said his group believed the redevelopment would not be complete until 2009 unless a special effort was made to speed it up.
He said an MRI scanner was approved for the hospital 15 months ago but it would be another 15 months before any patient benefited from it.
In the meantime, he said, children had to be ferried by taxi to Dublin's Beaumont hospital for MRI scans.
"It would have been put in place in six months if one of the children had died in the taxi," Prof Smith added.
Heart Children Ireland have also claimed that a new cardiologist has deferred taking up his post in Crumlin until the MRI scanner is operating.
A spokeswoman for the hospital said once the design brief for the MRI scanner was approved, the hospital believed it could have the scanner in operation within a year.