Parents and children in the Tallaght area will be the real victims of a political decision to relocate national paediatric services to the Taoiseach's constituency, it was claimed today.
A campaign has been launched by the Tallaght Hospital Action Committee and the Mayor of South Dublin County Council, Cllr Eamon Maloney, to protect services for children at Tallaght Hospital.
The Government has decided that the new National Children's Hospital is to be based on the campus of the Mater Hospital on Dublin's northside in Bertie Ahern's Dublin Central constituency.
Speaking at the launch today of the "Children's Hospital Tallaght - Keep it Open" campaign, Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte described the Government's decision to relocate all paediatric services to the Taoiseach's northside constituency as "unwise" and said it would impose hardship on parents.
"It has no regard for the travel and congestion implications of concentrating a single National Children's Hospital on a northside site," he said.
Mr Rabbitte claimed that the decision had been made by the Taoiseach six months before Minister for Health Mary Harney assured the Labour leader in the Dáil that a location had not been finalised.
"In times of more straitened resources the original plan for the Adelaide/Tallaght Hospital was never quite implemented. However, any Government decision that would remove paediatrics from Tallaght would run the risk of downgrading the hospital that we do have," the Dublin
South West TD said.
"In addition there is a large population of children in this region. At a minimum the sensible decision is to locate the National Children's Hospital in two campuses - one northside and one southside."
Meanwhile, Labour's Dublin Central TD Joe Costello will tomorrow continue his ongoing protest outside the Mater Hospital over the continuing A&E crisis.
"As recently as Wednesday there were 13 people on patients on trolleys in the hospital. It's simply unacceptable," he said. "Now that Mary Harney is no longer burdened with running the PDs and with deputising for the Taoiseach, it shouldn't be too much to ask that she direct more of her energy to delivering on her promise to eliminate the A&E crisis."
Mr Costello has been leading weekly protests at the Mater for three years.