The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said this morning it will not be reconsidering its decision to locate the new national children's hospital at the Mater Hospital.
It was responding to a report from the Board of Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin calling for a review of the decision.
The report claims the Mater site is too small, has insufficient parking for families and staff, and will not have the room for enough single rooms and facilities for parents to stay with their sick children.
In a statement, the HSE said it "shared the aspirations and vision for children set out in this report and is fully confident that they can be catered for within the site which has now been selected at the Mater Hospital location".
However, the Crumlin report urges the HSE and the Department of Health to reconsider the possibility of building the hospital, into which Dublin's three existing children's hospitals are to be merged, on a greenfield site where there would also be room to house a maternity hospital and an adult hospital.
More than 700 families using Crumlin hospital were surveyed for the report, and 81 per cent of these had travelled to the hospital by car. This pointed to the need for adequate car parking.
"The site allocated for the children's hospital is less than one-quarter of the site of the present Crumlin hospital site and is approximately 0.5 hectares larger then the current Temple Street site," the report states.
The report also claims that while the Mater site was chosen on the basis that it could accommodate the development of the hospital in a shorter timeframe than other sites, it is unlikely that the original timescale of having the hospital built and open at the Mater by 2011 will be met.
The report was drawn up by the board of Crumlin hospital with input from Tony Donoghue, health facility planner with Hok International UK, and Brian Cullen of Cullen Payne Architects, Dublin, both of whom were involved in drawing up the development control plan for a new children's hospital in Crumlin before the decision was made to amalgamate all the paediatric hospitals on one site.
The report concludes by saying that the Mater site does not have the potential to deliver a facility that can comply with the optimum level of care.
"The board considers that there is a risk of this opportunity to provide a world-class children's hospital being lost and is suggesting that the decision to locate on this site at the Mater hospital be reviewed," it said.
Commenting on the report, Liz McManus, Labour Party spokesperson on health, said it was a significant development that the government simply couldn't ignore.
"The biggest children's hospital in the State has now raised very serious questions about the decision to locate at the Mater, and major reservations about the plan have already been raised by Tallaght hospital," she said.
She said it was essential that the government commissions an independent review of the decision to locate at the Mater.
"The announcement on the location of the new hospital was made with considerable haste last June and unfortunately has many of the hallmarks of a politically motivated decision," she said.