Madam, - It is disingenuous of the Archbishop of Dublin to play the Protestant card in attempting to secure the new paediatric hospital for Tallaght (The Irish Times, May 11th). Wherever it is sited, the new hospital will presumably be a State hospital following State rather than Roman Catholic medical practice.
The Archbishop and I are both ex-officio governors of St Patrick's Hospital and the Rotunda Hospital. Both have recently elected Roman Catholic churchmen for the first time and the medical director and the master are both Roman Catholics.
What we are seeing is the gradual transfer of the running of these former Protestant hospitals to members of the Roman Catholic church, but not to Roman Catholic medical practice. This is fair enough as far as I am concerned.
- Yours, etc,
The Very Rev ROBERT MacCARTHY, The Deanery, Upper Kevin Street, Dublin 8.