The Government has been slammed for not solving a recruitment crisis that has forced the restriction of opening hours to a children's urgent care centre.
The new facility at Blanchardstown's Connolly Hospital is due to open tomorrow but its opening hours are to be restricted due to the shortage.
Original plans would have seen it open from 8am to 12 midnight, and it was then changed from 8am to 6pm but has now been reduced further from 9am to 5pm.
The restricted hours were confirmed yesterday following a meeting with Children's Health Ireland who oversee the services.
The Irish Medical Organisation has shared its frustration at the difficulty to recruit senior doctors and has said that "only the Government can resolve it".
They said: "It is a matter of considerable frustration that these services will not operate to the full extent of what was originally planned in the model of care agreed between consultants and the CHG.
"The services will now be restricted to Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm due to the extreme difficult in recruiting Paediatric Emergency Medicine Consultants and Paediatric Radiology Consultants.
"Consultants have made every effort to work with CHG management to put in place a number of risk mitigations to allow the service to open on a restricted basis.
"However unless and until the recruitment problem is sorted there can be no further expansion of children’s services at this centre or in terms of the broader development of satellite clinics and the new Children’s Hospital.
"This recruitment problem is of the Government’s making and only the Government can resolve it.
"The IMO insists that immediate engagement must take place to ensure we can properly plan and deliver a consultant delivered service for children and the wider population and put an end to the scandal of long waiting lists and the adverse affects this has on patients."
