The Children's University Hospital, Temple Street today pledged its commitment to the plan to locate the new national children's hospital on the site of the Mater hospital in Dublin.
In a statement, the hospital said it accepted that the criteria set by the Health Service Executive and the procedures undertaken by the expert group to identify the appropriate co-located site was "a rigorous and authoritative technical process".
It said: "The proposed model - requiring co-location with an adult teaching hospital - has been adopted by the largest children's hospitals in the world, and Children's University Hospital, Temple Street accepts that the adoption of a different model would not best serve the interests of the children of Ireland."
Temple Street is one of the three existing children's hospitals in Dublin - along with Crumlin and Tallaght - which the Government plans to merge into the new facility.
Today's statement comes as the Cabinet "strongly reaffirmed" the decision to locate the new hospital on the Mater campus.
A Government spokesman told ireland.comthat ministers had discussed the matter at this morning's meeting and there would be no change or review to the existing proposal.
The Board of Temple Street hospital said: "In planning the new hospital the resources within all three [Dublin] children's hospitals will be required to produce a co-operative vision of how services will be developed and provided by the national paediatric hospital".
But Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin has already said it will refuse to co-operate with the plan because it believes the Mater site is unsuitable in terms of size and location to accommodate a new state-of-the-art facility.
The National Children's Hospital at Tallaght is also understood to be against locating the new hospital on Mater site and is expected to refuse to co-operate with the move.
Yesterday Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said he was concerned about the way the decision was made to locate the new hospital at the Mater site in Mr Ahern's constituency.
He called on the Minister for Health Mary Harney to begin an immediate review of the process surrounding the selection of the site.
Ms Harney responded to this saying: "The people that advised on the location of the hospital were architects, engineers, the OPW and experts from Trinity College. They recommended the site. I didn't, the HSE didn't.
"I want to get away from reviews. I do not believe it is in anyone's interest to delay and have more reviews. This hospital was never going to be located on a greenfield site. It needed to be co-located with an adult teaching hospital."
Temple Street said it did not believe "it would be in the best interests of Ireland's children to engage in inter-hospital argument which might delay the building of the facility which is so badly needed".
