Doctors have expressed concern that the results of a comprehensive risk assessment on the new Urgent Care Centre for children, which is due to open in Connolly Hospital at the end of the month, have not yet been published.

The Urgent Care Centre is being opened as part of the broader rollout of the new National Children's Hospital, which will be located at St James's Hospital in Dublin's city centre. However, according to Dr Peadar Gilligan of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO), the failure to publish this risk assessment is a cause for concern.

"The IMO fully supports the development of enhanced services for children, however we have very serious concerns regarding the scheduled opening of the Urgent Care Centre in Connolly Hospital on July 31. We are now just days away from the scheduled opening, yet we have still to see a detailed and up-to-date risk assessment to confirm that the center is fit to operate, even on the restricted basis that the Children's Hospital Group has admitted will be necessary," Dr Gilligan commented.

He pointed out that the HSE was facing great difficulty in recruiting sufficient consultants to operate the new services for children, due to what the IMO describes as pay discrimination.

Consultants recruited since October 2012 are earning up to €50,000 per annum less than colleagues employed before October 2012, who are doing exactly the same job. The IMO believes that these cuts are directly linked to the more than 500 empty consultant posts across the country.

"The cost of the Children's Hospital has consumed the political system, yet no effort has been made to address how the satellite centres and the hospital are going to be staffed or how care is going to be delivered.

"Since 2012, we have simply not been able to attract doctors to our health service and, at the same time, our newly qualified doctors are leaving Ireland to work abroad in health systems where no discrimination exists," Dr Gilligan insisted.

He said that it is "telling that even this flagship project has experienced an acute consultant recruitment crisis", and added that without Government action, this situation will "inevitably deteriorate".