Tallaght hospital has rejected plans to create a united national children's hospital at the Mater site in Dublin.
The chairman of the hospital's board of management, Alan Gillis, said today that Tallaght was instead putting forward proposals for a second site.
Alan Gillis, Tallaght hospital
"We have what we think is a solution, a very good solution, which is a two-site solution under a single governance," he told RTÉ's Morning Ireland.
Mr Gillis said although the Government was set on locating a children's hospital at the Mater, there was also a need for a second site on the south side of the city, under the same independent governance.
He claimed the Tallaght proposal fits all the criteria laid down by the Government's own report, which did not say that all services needed to be located at one particular site, but specified only a single hospital.
Mr Gillis said that in other countries, it was commonplace to have a hospital spread across several different sites but under one governance.
"What we need to do is go looking for the best solution for children, and sitting in a traffic jam is not one of those," said Mr Gillis, a former Fine Gael MEP for Leinster who is standing in the Kildare South constituency in the upcoming election.
A study carried out on access to Tallaght hospital by Dr Enda Murphy, a research fellow at Trinity College Dublin, found that its location came out as the most accessible by private car for some 75 per cent of children in the State.
The Health Service Executive has carried out its own study, which found that there was little difference between Tallaght, St James's and the Mater hospital in terms of access by private transport.
The decision of Tallaght hospital comes after Crumlin Children's hospital said it would not co-operate with the plans to move to the Mater.