Proposals to ensure independence of new maternity hospital set to go to HSE board – Donnelly

Proposals aimed at ensuring the independence of the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) when it moves to the St Vincent's Hospital campus will go to the HSE board "very shortly", the Minister for Health has said.

Stephen Donnelly said a memo to Government setting out the terms of the legal licence for the proposed hospital would follow "very shortly after that".

A lot of work had been done in the background over the last six months, the Minister told reporters, with Department of Health officials and other stakeholders poring over legal contracts defining the operational model that will apply at the proposed facility.

These, he added, would “provide Government with absolute assurance that everything there will be just like it is here [in Holles Street], that the only influence will be medical influence, that every service that is provided under law will be provided and that it will be independent”.

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Under revised provisions, the long-delayed €800 million hospital would come under State control for 299 years after its transfer to the NMH from St Vincent's Healthcare Group. The plan to move the NMH from Holles Street in Dublin 2 to the Elm Park site has been in train since 2013, but the project has been mired in controversy for years.

The Religious Sisters of Charity are due to transfer the ownership of lands at St Vincent's to an independent entity, which would then lease the new maternity hospital to the State.

Critics claim that a Catholic religious ethos could live on, possibly compromising the hospital’s power to carry out procedures such as pregnancy termination and sterilisation, but this has been rejected by St Vincent’s and the NMH.

Investment

Mr Donnelly opened a new 12-bed labour and birthing unit, and a bereavement unit, at the NMH on Monday. He said that while it was great to see the investment in the existing premises, the new hospital was needed as Holles Street is not “fit for purpose”.

“We will continue to invest to make services better while they’re here. But obviously we need to have this new state-of-the-art facility down the road as well.”

Referring to the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr Donnelly said Ireland was clearly "through" the Omicron wave, though there were still "an awful lot of cases".

He said the numbers needing hospital treatment for the disease were staying high, which was having a knock-on effect on the hospital system.

The Health Protection Surveillance Centre on Monday reported 2,383 PCR-confirmed cases and a further 4,760 positive antigen tests were registered on the HSE’s online portal. There were 808 people with Covid-19 being treated in the State’s hospitals on Monday, an increase of 59 in 24 hours, including 47 in intensive care, an increase of one.

Northern Ireland’s Department of Health on Monday reported two further deaths of from the disease, and 2,053 additional cases. There were 466 Covid-19 patients in hospital in the North, including two in intensive care.