Consultants call for children’s hospital to be linked to maternity site

More than 40 consultants have called for the long-delayed national children’s hospital — set to be based at St James’s — to be directly linked to a leading maternity site.

A letter with the signatures, including that of former Irish Hospital Consultants’ Association president Dr Paul Oslizlok, said the move is needed to protect potentially vulnerable patients.

According to the medics, all of whom work at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, there is a particular risk to newborns if the connection is not made as part of the development of the new facility.