A lobby group of parents with children at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin has criticised the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, for failing to commit to a time-frame for the hospital's redevelopment.
An independent audit of the hospital, published last February, found the facilities seriously outdated and insufficient to provide "currently acceptable standards" of care.
Mr Martin subsequently agreed that the infrastructure of the hospital was unacceptable and committed himself to a major redevelopment of the facility.
However according to the parents' lobby, the New Crumlin Hospital Group, the Minister has yet to say when the new hospital will be built.
"Without this timetable the redevelopment process could easily drag on for years without anybody being accountable. This cannot be allowed to happen," the chairman of the lobby group, Mr Karl Anderson, said.
The group wants Crumlin Hospital to be completely rebuilt by 2009.
The hospital had been thrown into crisis after decades of underinvestment, Mr Anderson said, and children, parents and hospital staff had already endured huge delays in the building of essential facilities.
"We do not want to see a repeat of the shamefully slow progress witnessed with the development of the new theatre block, which has taken 15 years to develop and will only be finished at the end of this year," he said.
"The staff and patients deserve to know for how long more they must endure the outdated and grossly inadequate facilities at the hospital revealed by the Pollock Report which was published in February."
The group is calling on Mr Martin to publish the timetable to show "he is treating Crumlin Hospital as urgent"and that it will be rebuilt by 2009, Mr Anderson said.
Technical officials from the Department of Health were in the process of examining the development control plan for the hospital, a Department spokeswoman said.
Once this was completed the project would be handed over to the design team,
Mr Martin was committed to keeping in touch with the parents, she added, and Department officials would be meeting the group this week.
