The largest children's hospital in the State - Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin - is to be replaced, Minister for Health Mary Harney confirmed yesterday.
She said that while she would prefer to see the hospital rebuilt at a different site, she was awaiting a report from the Health Service Executive (HSE) before deciding if the hospital should be rebuilt on its current site or elsewhere.
Explaining her preference for a different location she said it was "because it would take a lot longer to construct a new hospital on this site and it would also be very disruptive to the operation of the hospital if it was a construction site for a long number of years.
"So I think it would make more sense to go off this particular site but I'm awaiting a report from the HSE."
Ms Harney also said she no longer wanted to see specialised treatment services for children spread across "a number of sites". But this did not mean that three children's hospitals in Dublin were too many.
"I think you would need facilities on each side of the city to deal with sick children, but tertiary treatment, very specialised treatment, open-heart surgery, activity of that kind, in my opinion shouldn't be spread across a number of sites.
"Every paediatrician I've spoken to in the Dublin area has made that point to me. There may be a difference of opinion as to where it should be at the end of the day, but everybody agrees that tertiary facilities for sick children should be at a single location."
Ms Harney stressed she would make a decision very soon and once a decision was made, she hoped the hospital would be rebuilt quickly. She would look "at innovative ways of how we could have the hospital in place quickly ... In the modern context, there is a lot of interest in the provision of healthcare facilities and we've got to mobilise that interest to provide a hospital for sick children as quickly as possible," she added.