The State's new national children's hospital is not expected to be completed for five years.
Work, however, has already begun at the Mater hospital campus in Dublin to make way for the new building into which Dublin's three existing children's hospitals will be merged.
And two new buildings into which Mater staff can relocate so that an area of the Mater campus can be cleared for the new paediatric facility were officially opened by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern yesterday.
Work on these new buildings had begun before the site for the new children's hospital was announced last June.
They were being built to make way for Temple Street children's hospital to move to the Mater. This was the only children's hospital due to move there under the original plans.
Mr Ahern said that the new buildings were a critical part of the entire project and would "allow for the commencement of the main building programme for the Mater children's hospital development".
The new buildings include a centre for nurse education as well as hostel accommodation on Eccles Street, which will also serve as the main entrance to the hospital while building work is under way.
Des Lamont, chairman of the board of the Mater Misericordiae and Children's University Hospitals, said Mr Ahern had given a commitment that the new children's hospital would be built at the Mater and he thanked him for honouring that commitment.
He said that the new children's hospital was due to be completed by 2011, the year in which the Mater Hospital celebrates its 150th birthday.
The decision to site the new children's hospital at the Mater campus has met with opposition from a number of other hospitals in the city, including St James's, Tallaght and Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin.