Patients with infectious diseases have been left in crowded emergency units for up to 30 hours, while blood stains and soiled bed pans have been found in maternity wards.

IT was the Health Service Executive (HSE), not international medical experts, who recommended the new national children’s hospital be built on the Mater Hospital site in Dublin, a member of the health authority stressed yesterday.

THE Government’s plans to establish a state-of-the-art national children’s hospital on a new site at Dublin’s Mater Hospital has received a major setback with the decision of Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin not to participate in its development.

Catherine Shanahan