Tánaiste Mary Harney will officially open the new €10.8 million emergency department at Cork University Hospital (CUH) today.
The emergency department at CUH is the only level-one trauma unit in the Republic.
This is based on the department having the back-up of all the specialist services needed to deal with multiple trauma, ie neurosurgery, cardio-thoracic surgery, orthopaedics and plastic surgery.
The new facility is capable of dealing with 50,000 emergency patients a year, plus an additional 12,000 ophthalmic patients. It has replaced the existing emergency department which treated 42,000 people annually.
The new emergency department is more than twice the size of the existing one, and is considered to be a key element in the €200 million expansion under way at the hospital.
Emergency treatment has been provided to more than 2,200 patients since the unit opened to the public on April 18th
CUH consultant Dr Stephen Cusack has described the new department as a "landmark in emergency medicine in Ireland".
It has a waiting room and treatment area specially for children, a treatment area for minor injuries, and a four-place resuscitation area with state-of-the-art overhead X-ray equipment.
There are two X-ray examination rooms, 16 treatment places, a 12-bed clinical-decision unit, an emergency eye treatment facility and a decontamination unit.