THE GOVERNMENT HAS announced the name of the new national children’s hospital being built in Dublin.

Once it’s opened the hospital will be called Phoenix Children’s Health.

The name was announced today by An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Health minister Simon Harris at an event turning the sod on two new health projects.

Construction begun on the new children’s hospital earlier this year. It will be located at the St James’s Hospital campus on the outskirts of Dublin city centre.

The project is projected to cost over €1 billion in full and is due to be completed in 2021.

When it is completed it will incorporate the staff and operations of Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital Crumlin, Temple Street Children’s University Hospital and Tallaght Hospital.

It was announced in August that the hospital will be fully secular.

The government came in for criticism yesterday after it was revealed by the Sunday Times that the board of the new hospital were challenging three fire safety conditions contained in its planning permission.

Speaking today, Harris said having a name for the new hospital made the project “even more real and meaningful”.

In a statement, the Department of Health said that the name “symbolises the birth of new opportunities”.

“The Phoenix is a mythological symbol of renewal, community regeneration, vision, hope and inspiration,” the statement reads.

It is a fitting and apt name for a service which will have a profound impact on the lives of children and their families in Ireland for generations to come.

Both Varadkar and Harris turned the sod on two new healthcare projects today.

A new children’s hospital outpatient centre at Connolly Hospital and the redevelopment of the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dun Laoghaire into a 120-bed facility.

Read: Appeal over fire safety regulations of new children’s hospital was made ‘with an eye towards costs’

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