More than 4,000 people marched in Tallaght in south Dublin on Saturday to oppose plans to move medical services for children from the local hospital to a new national centre earmarked for the northside of the city.
The mayor of South Dublin County Council Éamonn Maloney said that as the Government's plans to centralise paediatric services at the Mater hospital became more widely known, anger and frustration among people in the Tallaght area was growing.
Mr Maloney said that he had requested a meeting with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to discuss the proposed move of services for children to the north side.
He said that even authorities at Tallaght hospital did not know which particular services were earmarked to be transferred to the Mater and which would remain where they were. He hoped that the Taoiseach would provide a definitive answer.
Ritchie O'Reilly of the Tallaght Hospital Action Group said local people were now only waking up to the plans by the Government to remove services for children.
People were "very bitter and very angry" at the plans.
His group had collected more than 6,600 signatures opposing the plans in advance of the march. It would now attempt to widen its campaign and involve people in other parts of the Tallaght hospital catchment area such as north Kildare, west Wicklow and Clondalkin in Dublin.
The Tallaght Hospital Action Group has proposed that hospital services for children should be provided at two locations - one on the north side and one on the south side. It suggested that these could be run by a single management team.
The Health Service Executive has proposed that new urgent care units would be developed around Dublin following the centralisation of children's hospital services at the Mater.
