No progress has been made towards the construction of the National Children's Hospital at the Mater Hospital, according to the Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio's 'This Week' programme the Archbishop said that plans have not even made it to the drawing board stage yet.

However, Dr Martin, who is Chairman of Crumlin Hospital said that hospital was being starved of funding and was in need of guaranteed funding for the next seven years.

He said: "We are now a number of years after the McKinsey report and still haven't come up with a pattern of care. There's talk now of having accident and emergency services in Tallaght, Blanchardstown and Loughlinstown, which seems to me to be having a splintering of the service to areas in Dublin rather than having a genuinely national centre.

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"In the meantime the service that Crumlin is providing will have to be seriously curtailed due to a lack of funding. When we asked where we should cut back, looking at efficiencies, we were told to look at the idea of introducing waiting lists."

A spokesman for the HSE said that plans for the National Children's Hospital were being progressed but it was a complicated process. "There's a development board in place and it is being progressed," he said.

He added that the HSE also worked with hospitals experiencing funding difficulties and there was no question of budgets being cut because of the National Children's Hospital.

(VB/JM)