Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
THE GOVERNMENT’S DECISION to name the new national children’s hospital ‘Phoenix Children’s Health’ has sparked criticism from opposition politicians and campaigners.
Yesterday, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Minister for Health Simon Harris announced the new name – but some people deemed it inappropriate given the news over the weekend.
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.
Criticising the name, professor John Crown wrote on Twitter last night: “Not a joke! Children’s hospital which wants derogation from sprinkler requirement to be named Phoenix.”
https://twitter.com/ProfJohnCrown/status/922436092858650624
Speaking to TheJournal.ie, historian Mary McAuliffe slammed the name as “meaningless”.
“Listening to the Taoiseach’s speech yesterday about meaningless spin about how the Phoenix inspires community generation, new beginnings, that sort of thing… This is a children’s hospital, not anything else. It’s a hospital in which sick children will be cared for,” McAuliffe said.
“Calling it the Phoenix and then trying to get out of some of the fire regulations is just bad timing,” she said.
Speaking to RTÉ News on Sunday, Children’s minister Katherine Zappone said that the appeal over fire safety requirements at the new hospital was made with an eye towards costs, but that children’s safety won’t be compromised.
“The primary responsibility and concern is the safety of our children – full stop, end of story,” Zappone said.
Simon Harris insisted yesterday that having the new name for the 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.”
https://twitter.com/MaryMcAuliffe4/status/922516331966148610
Sinn Féin TD Louise O’Reilly told TheJournal.ie that the focus should be solely on building a hospital before having any discussions about the name.
“It’s a handy distraction for the government that we’re talking about the name and we’re not talking about the health and safety issues that have arisen over the weekend and I think it’s probably more important,” O’Reilly said.
“This is just a government who are desperate for some good news to distract from the real news.”
Construction of hospital
Construction began 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.
Kathleen Lynn
Sinn Féin has previously called for the new hospital to be named after Kathleen Lynn. As well as being a Sinn Féin politician, Lynn was a suffragette and doctor who co-founded Saint Ultan’s Children’s Hospital in Dublin in 1919.
The hospital closed in the 1980s when it merged with the National Children’s Hospital on Harcourt Street, which in turn was later relocated to Tallaght Hospital.
Speaking in favour of naming the hospital after Lynn, Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh said she ”challenged many of the norms of society at the time in relation to women”.
Likewise today, McAuliffe told TheJournal.ie that she believes if that the hospital should be named after Lynn.
“If we’re going to name something, we should name it after a person,” she said.
The person most obviously associated with hospitals and hospitals with sick children, who spent her life and devoted her life to the care and support of particularly poor children, was Kathleen Lynn who set up St Ultan’s Hospital in 1919.
There is already a Phoenix Children’s Hospital located in Phoenix, Arizona in the US.
Isnt god wonderful….
No….The universe is wonderful.
Your obviously more religous than scientific otherwise you would know your so called God did not create the Universe. Or this World for that matter.
I think there was a slight hint of sarcasm in James’s comment which you all missed
Nice work putting the caption over the actual object in the image…
Erhhhhhh…….they didn’t. Its above the word “at” in the caption right on the edge of the outer ring.
Infinitesmily grand!
Is that we’re the little bo***x Fitzpatrick comes from????
The world is flat, one god created all this and we don’t know who created him/her/it?
I’ve got your ring and new moon right here.
God
Invisible pink unicorn
SCIENCE SHOWS THAT THE UNIVERSE CANNOT BE ETERNAL because it could not have sustained itself eternally due to the law of entropy (increasing net energy decay, even in an open system). Einstein showed that space, matter, and time all are physical and all had a beginning. Space even produces particles because it’s actually something, not nothing. Even time had a beginning! Time is not eternal.
The law of entropy doesn’t allow the universe to be eternal. If the universe were eternal, everything, including time (which modern science has shown is as physical as mass and space), would have become totally entropied by now and the entire universe would have ended in a uniform heat death a long, long time ago. The fact that this hasn’t happened already is powerful evidence for a beginning to the universe.
Popular atheistic scientist Stephen Hawking admits that the universe had a beginning and came from nothing but he believes that nothing became something by a natural process yet to be discovered. That’s not rational thinking at all, and it also would be making the effect greater than its cause to say that nothing created something. The beginning had to be of supernatural origin because natural laws and processes do not have the ability to bring something into existence from nothing. What about the Higgs boson (the so-called “God Particle”)? The Higgs boson does not create mass from nothing, but rather it converts energy into mass. Einstein showed that all matter is some form of energy.
The supernatural cannot be proved by science but science points to a supernatural intelligence and power for the origin and order of the universe. Where did God come from? Obviously, unlike the universe, God’s nature doesn’t require a beginning.
EXPLAINING HOW AN AIRPLANE WORKS doesn’t mean no one made the airplane. Explaining how life or the universe works doesn’t mean there was no Maker behind them. Natural laws may explain how the order in the universe works and operates, but mere undirected natural laws cannot explain the origin of that order. Once you have a complete and living cell then the genetic code and biological machinery exist to direct the formation of more cells, but how could life or the cell have naturally originated when no directing code and mechanisms existed in nature? Read my Internet article: HOW FORENSIC SCIENCE REFUTES ATHEISM.
WHAT IS SCIENCE? Science simply is knowledge based on observation. No one observed the universe coming by chance or by design, by creation or by evolution. These are positions of faith. The issue is which faith the scientific evidence best supports.
Some things don’t need experiment or scientific proof. In law there is a dictum called prima facie evidence. It means “evidence that speaks for itself.”
An example of a true prima facie would be if you discovered an elaborate sand castle on the beach. You don’t have to experiment to know that it came by design and not by the chance forces of wind and water.
If you discovered a romantic letter or message written in the sand, you don’t have to experiment to know that it was by design and not because a stick randomly carried by wind put it there. You naturally assume that an intelligent and rational being was responsible.
I encourage all to read my popular Internet articles: NATURAL LIMITS TO EVOLUTION and HOW FORENSIC SCIENCE REFUTES ATHEISM
Visit my newest Internet site: THE SCIENCE SUPPORTING CREATION
Babu G. Ranganathan*
(B.A. Bible/Biology)
Author of popular Internet article, TRADITIONAL DOCTRINE OF HELL EVOLVED FROM GREEK ROOTS
*I have given successful lectures (with question and answer period afterwards) defending creation before evolutionist science faculty and students at various colleges and universities. I’ve been privileged to be recognized in the 24th edition of Marquis “Who’s Who in The East” for my writings on religion and science.
Wake me up when you’ve finished the lecture. Time and place. This is neither.
There’s a spacecraft leaving tomorrow for it be on it the lot of you
have your say