Greg Daly
National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street The St Vincent’s Healthcare Group (SVHG) has rejected suggestions that an order of religious sisters is obstructing plans to relocate the National Maternity Hospital.
In an article headed “Nuns obstruct maternity hospital plan”, The Sunday Times reported at the weekend that the SVHG, which is owned by the Religious Sisters of Charity, will not allow completed plans for the new National Maternity Hospital to be put forward for planning permission until the maternity hospital agrees to become a part of its corporate structure.
It is intended that the new hospital, relocated from Holles Street, would be built on the SVHG Elm Park campus, which is already home to St Vincent’s University Hospital and St Vincent’s Private Hospital.
The agreement to accommodate the maternity hospital at Elm Park had always been predicated on 2008’s Independent Review of Maternity and Gynaecology Services in the Greater Dublin Area, which recommended that the co-located hospitals would operate under a single system of clinical and corporate governance, a spokesman for the group has said.
Rejected
The spokesman rejected suggestions that the sisters are the prime movers behind the position that a maternity hospital on the campus should come under SVHG governance.
Rather, he said, that position “reflects the consistent views of directors, management and consultants at St Vincent’s” who believe that they “cannot operate a large healthcare campus with competing systems of clinical and corporate governance”.
The spokesman explained that the relocated maternity hospital would have clinical autonomy, and addressed concerns expressed by Dr Peter Boylan, chairman of the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in Ireland, about the affect of SVHG governance on services the National Maternity Hospital might otherwise offer.
“Regarding services provided,” he said, “we have a contract with the State to provide medical services in accordance with the law. This is not affected by the views of our shareholders, and to suggest otherwise is simply incorrect.”