The Coombe unlikely to be moved to new site at children’s hospital ‘for years’

Plans to move the Coombe Women & Infants University Hospital in Dublin to a site by the new national children’s hospital at St James’s are unlikely to be realised for many years, according to its new master.

Prof Michael O’Connell, who has taken up the post of master of the Coombe, said he “doesn’t see” it moving to St James’s during the seven years of his term.

He was inaugurated at a ceremony in the Coombe on Wednesday and his appointment means men once again occupy all three masters’ positions at Dublin’s three maternity hospitals.

The Government has said it remains committed to moving the maternity hospital to a site adjacent to the children’s hospital currently being built at St James’s but Prof O’Connell pointed out that this project is currently consuming most of the available capital funding for the health service.

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He said that with more than 50,000 babies set to be delivered at the Coombe during his term in office, the maternity hospital “cannot stand still waiting for a development that make take a number of years”.

To meet demand in the medium term, the hospital has developed ambitious plans to build more theatres and emergency rooms, as well as a national laboratory for cervical-cancer screening services.

“By the time we get to 2026, the bicentenary of delivering babies in the Coombe, we’ll have a hospital that is more fit for purpose and one that will delivers the best benign gynaecological service in the country,” he said.

Describing the space available for a maternity hospital at St James’s as “tight”, he said the Coombe would have to sit down and consider its options – to include moving all or just some of its services to the new site – before making a decision as to what was best for its women patients.

Eighth Amendment

From Youghal in Co Cork, Prof O'Connell trained in University College Cork before completing specialist training in the UK and Ireland. He is internationally recognised for his work in India and the Middle East, and has published widely in areas such as maternal disease in pregnancy.

For the last four years, he has acted as clinical director in charge of integrating the Coombe with the maternity unit of the Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise, where the number of births has begun to rise again after controversy over a series of baby deaths around a decade ago.

Prof O’Connell said the number of women seeking terminations of pregnancy at the hospital since abortion laws changed last year had been “smaller than most people anticipated”.

He declined to say whether he personally was performing terminations, but emphasised that as master “I will facilitate a quality service”.

He co-signed a letter in 2018 to the then-chairman of the Institute of Obstetricians, Dr Peter Boylan, calling on Dr Boylan to resign because he was campaigning for the repeal of the Eighth Amendment.

Asked about the letter, he said the issue at stake was whether the institute, which included “people on both ends of the spectrum” in the abortion debate, should be offering professional advice rather than campaigning.

“As professionals, we have to offer professional advice. My view as master isn’t important; it’s how I represent the Coombe,” he said.

The number of babies born at the Coombe last year dipped below the 8,000 mark (to 7,950) for the first time during the term of previous master Prof Sharon Sheehan.

Prof O’Connell, an expert in high-risk pregnancy, pointed out that the complexity of cases has increased, with many women affected by gestational diabetes and weight issues, as well as “the increased expectation that everything will be perfect and normal”, during pregnancy.

From March, the Coombe plans to increase the number of HPV tests it carries out, in advance of a national switch from slide-based tests for cervical cancer to HPV screening.