[2] The Mater serves as one of two major trauma centers for Ireland: the other is Cork University Hospital.

[3] The hospital was founded as an initiative of Catherine McAuley of the Sisters of Mercy and was officially opened by Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, on 24 September 1861.

Electric light, a major step in the improvement of endoscopy, was first used by Sir Francis Cruise, to allow cystoscopy, hysteroscopy and sigmoidoscopy as well as the examination of the nasal (and later thoracic) cavities at the hospital in 1865.

[5] It became the first hospital in Ireland to remain open 24 hours a day when it dealt with a cholera epidemic in 1886.

[4] In 2003, the National Pulmonary Hypertension Unit, the leading centre for the treatment of pulmonary hypertension in Ireland, was established at the hospital[6] and, in 2008, the hospital became the first public hospital in Ireland to offer percutaneous aortic valve replacement.