The controversy over the new hospital in Dublin's north inner city has taken a pause for breath pending publication of recommendations for its structures and services next month by UK-based consultancy, Rawlinson, Kelly & Whittlestone. The report, which was originally due last April, will advise on the hospital's preferred model of care, including its core and external services.

As children's doctors and nurses continue to privately express worries about the proposed provision of paediatric services, a threatened mutiny by the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board over secretarial facilities has been defused behind the scenes by health minister Mary Harney. The brief to the board, which was appointed last March and is chaired by Philip Lynch, chief executive of energy and waste company One51, is to design, build and equip the new hospital on the site of the Mater Hospital in the Taoiseach's constituency.

Last week, in the Sunday Tribune, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, criticised the manner in which the plan for the hospital was launched as "a public-relations exercise which has flown in the face of those who did it." As chairman of the board of Crumlin Hospital, Martin said those who voiced criticism were accused of sour grapes. "I hope we won't be saying in a few years' time, 'Well, we could have had a hospital to be proud of, but we don't.' As somebody who lives in this area, sometimes, when I'm going over to the southside, the longest part of my journey is getting down beyond the Mater Hospital, " he said. "That problem of traffic has to be looked at."

Last year, his Church of Ireland counterpart, Archbishop John Neill, president of Tallaght Hospital, described the inception of the paediatric hospital as "ill-conceived" and arising from "a flawed process" which was not good for children.

Dublin's third existing children's hospital, Temple Street, which is located close to the Mater, has said it is committed to the development of the new paediatric hospital but, in a statement issued by chief executive Paul Cunniffe, it called for the opinions of all three hospitals to be "harnessed and turned into a positive force."

Asked if she was worried about the proposal, Dr Karina Butler, an infectious diseases consultant in Crumlin, said: "I'm very worried, in the sense that we haven't seen any convincing evidence that the site is appropriate. I do clinics in Temple Street and there are days when I've driven around there for an hour-and-a-half trying to park."