The new €2.4 billion paediatric hospital in Dublin will be officially known as the National Children’s Hospital Ireland, under proposals to be considered by the Cabinet.
Ministers will on Tuesday be asked to approve an application to trademark the name for the new hospital, which is expected to open next year.
There have been efforts in recent times to have the new hospital called after Kathleen Lynn, a doctor and political activist who was involved in both the 1913 lockout and the 1916 Easter Rising.
Several months ago Sinn Féin proposed a Bill that would name the new hospital after Dr Lynn.
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In April, Sinn Féin Dublin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh said a campaign to name the new hospital after Dr Lynn had “amassed almost 6,000 signatures and counts among its supporters leading historians, medics, trade unions and relatives of republican heroes”.
“It is a fitting homage to Dr Lynn and her fellow 1916 heroines,” he said.
“The Mayo-born Church of Ireland woman, not content with setting up Ireland’s first children’s hospital which went on to lead efforts to eradicate TB, introduce the BCG vaccine, and pioneer Montessori education, took part in the 1913 Lockout, was both chief medical officer of the Irish Citizen Army and vice-president of Sinn Féin, and came through time incarcerated by the British.”
“Lynn became the most senior ranking woman in the 1916 Rising when she assumed command of republicans at Dublin city hall”, Mr Ó Snodaigh said.
[ Who was Kathleen Lynn?: Pioneering doctor, socialist and public-health campaignerOpens in new window ]
In October 2017 the then minister for health Simon Harris announced that the new facility, which is being developed on the campus of St James’s Hospital, would be known as Phoenix Children’s Hospital Ireland.
However, the move ran into serious difficulties after health authorities in the US state of Arizona, where a prestigious hospital for children in the city of Phoenix had existing for many years, raised objections.
Health chiefs in Phoenix said it was anxious the Dublin hospital would “refrain from leveraging our name, goodwill and earned reputation” and it would “pursue all available legal remedies”.
Mr Harris subsequently said there would be a rethink about the name of the new national children’s hospital in Dublin.
