Staff and patients at Beaumont hospital have reacted angrily to a de facto ban by management on cribs in the foyer and wards of the hospital. According to the Irish Times, a petition “to save the crib” with more than 1,000 signatures was being ignored. “A lot of elderly patients are very upset. The children visiting like to see it. The staff like to see it,” their source is reported as saying.

In addition, management is “telling staff who have set up cribs . . . in the wards to remove them”.

An official response by the hospital avoided the central allegation of the petition, that the cribs in the foyer and the wards had been banned, nor did it respond to the popular appeal to return the cribs to their usual places of prominence. Instead, the statement pointed to the existence of a crib in the hospital chapel. It also said, “the wider hospital community is multicultural and therefore multifaith”. Because of this, the hospital operates “on an interdenominational basis, with chaplaincy facilities shared among the accredited Churches assigned to the hospital, namely Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian and Roman Catholic,” the statement read.