Cabinet to meet over children’s hospital

The Cabinet is to meet to discuss the National Children’s Hospital debacle tomorrow amid growing opposition to downsizing the facility and increasing evidence of the crisis within existing paediatric services.

It emerged at the weekend that the heads of three medical schools have added their voices to fears that important features of the hospital could be sacrificed to make it fit the Mater site.

Professor Hannah McGee of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Professor Dermot Kelleher of Trinity College, and Professor Bill Powderly of UCD reportedly called on Dr James Reilly, the minister for health, not to make the hospital smaller to try to appease An Bord Pleanála.