Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) has announced that it is moving acute paediatric services out of its unit at Tallaght hospital due to “anticipated unprecedented demand on acute services, especially adult services” at the hospital.

The children and young person’s services located in Tallaght will be moved to the existing children’s hospitals at Crumlin and Temple Street, and also to the urgent care centre at Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown.

Some bed capacity at the children’s hospital will also be made available for sick adults, CHI said.

The changes will take place on Friday, from midnight.

CHI said its contingency planning “is based on patient safety risk evaluations . . . This decision has been taken to protect our patients, their families and our staff. In doing this, CHI is supporting Tallaght University Hospital with additional staff, emergency facilities and bed capacity for sick adults.”

CHI said the emergency departments of Crumlin and Temple Street remain open, as does the urgent care centre in Connolly, between the hours of 10am and 5pm, Monday to Friday.

“We have already commenced cross-city ways of working so this temporary transition of services from CHI at Tallaght will be done in a safe, patient-centred manner through close collaborative working across CHI.”

Dr Ciara Martin, paediatric emergency medicine consultant and paediatric executive lead at Tallaght said: “We are experiencing a national public health crisis, one we have never seen before. It is so important that all of us within the health service take whatever steps are possible to ensure that we direct resources where they are most in need – to support patients and our colleagues.”