Catholic archbishop has no wish to be chair of National Maternity Hospital

Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said the board of the new National Maternity Hospital (NMH) must not remain "an anachronism of history" in having him as chair.

The board should instead “reflect the skills that are necessary to provide a top-class maternity hospital”, he said.

He firmly believed “in having hospitals with a voluntary component in their management”, but could not see the founders of the Sisters of Charity or the Sisters of Mercy wanting to be chief executives of big hospitals. They would want to be “where people needed urgent care, particularly of the poor”, he said.

The archbishop was speaking in DCU on Thursday, where a conference in preparation for the World Meeting of Families, Dublin 2018, was taking place.

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Although he is chairman of the NMH board he has never attended since becoming archbishop, he said. He recalled writing 10 years ago to then health minister Mary Harney to tell her he did not wish to continue as chair. "And I said, at that stage, that the structure of the board was an anachronism of history." The new board "shouldn't be a further anachronism of history".

The NMH was “not a Catholic hospital and I see nobody asking that the new National Maternity Hospital should be a Catholic hospital. It doesn’t mean that Catholic teaching is irrelevant but that is the reality of today.”

The new board “should reflect the skills that are necessary to provide a top class maternity hospital for women and children, and fathers as well”, he said.

‘Voluntary component’

Dr Martin said he was a “a firm believer in having hospitals with a voluntary component in their management”. Voluntary boards were “extremely strong in providing not just an ethos – and by ethos I don’t mean religious ethos – a general atmosphere of ensuring that the best happens in a hospital. I think it’s better than simply one that tends to be bureaucratic and distant,” he said.

“The important thing is that there be a board at the National Maternity Hospital which carries out that tradition,” he said.

He was speaking in the context of the public controversy over the move of the NMH from Holles Street to the St Vincent’s Hospital campus in Dublin. Earlier this week the Sisters of Charity said it would withdraw from ownership of the St Vincent’s Hospital Group.

Dr Martin also described as “disgraceful” the numbers of people sleeping on streets and “a shame on our city” that so many families were living in hotel rooms.

The archdiocese, together with Dublin City Council, will soon be opening accommodation for about 50 families on the site of the Mater Dei Institute.

It was "transitional, not ideal" but would "get people out of single hotel rooms, where they'll be able at least to have privacy", he said. "We do need to address the problem the backlog of social housing in Ireland. "