Parents urged not to bring their children to Temple Street today (4 August)

Five patients who were in the Temple Street Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) have been transferred to Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital Crumlin (OLCHC) accompanied by Temple Street PICU staff. Medical staff will also transfer to Crumlin as required.

All scheduled surgeries (x 20) in Temple Street and all elective x-rays have been postponed today. All other current in-patients in the hospital are stable and can be cared for within existing resources.

Crumlin, Tallaght, the Mater and Beaumont have been alerted and will accept transfers as required.

Technical and engineering services in the Mater have also been contacted and have offered support. The hospital is ‘off call’ for ambulances.

“In light of this entire issue, we urge all parents not to bring their children to Temple Street today. We will issue an update to the media in due course,” said a hospital spokesperson.

The hospital has also advised that an additional generator is en route and should be connected by this evening. This will provide “a more contingent supply of power until a new transformer is in place.”

“Although we have UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) in key clinical areas we made the decision early this morning to transfer our most critical patients (x five) to OLCHC purely as a precautionary measure until the additional backup generator is installed.

“When the additional generator is installed, we will resume our normal services in our ED and OPD and our planned elective surgeries.”