Q&A: What's the problem with the new National Maternity Hospital plan?

The location for the new €1bn hospital was agreed in 2016, at a site adjacent to the current campus of St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin. File picture

A new National Maternity Hospital was first mooted as far back as 1998, to replace the existing facility at Holles St on Dublin’s southside.

The location for the new €1bn hospital was agreed in 2016, at a site adjacent to the current campus of St Vincent’s Hospital, also on the southside of the capital. The idea was to boost the medical outcomes of the maternity hospital by having it adjacent to an established acute treatment facility.

However, the row that subsequently broke out over the potential ownership of the hospital by a body controlled by the Catholic Church has never gone away, and has indeed intensified in recent days.

What is the issue?

Ireland’s history with the Catholic Church is obviously complex, and in terms of the Church’s historical treatment of women, troubling. The site of the proposed new hospital is on a piece of land owned by the Sisters of Charity, an order of nuns. The property itself is valued at €200m, with the initial plan being that the religious order would gift the site to the State gratis, with the flipside to this being that the religious order would end up with ownership of all of the site bar the building’s shell. 

Critics of the deal say it is unacceptable that a Catholic charity could end up owning the State’s foremost maternity hospital, especially in an Ireland where abortion — something the Church is diametrically opposed to — is now legal, their point being that if the site is owned by the Church, the ethos practised therein will be a Catholic one.

What was done to reassure the public when it became clear the Church’s involvement was viewed with hostility?

In 2017 the Government moved to reassure the public by saying that a new company would be established to ensure the hospital would be run with “clinical and operational independence”. When this did not have the desired effect, the Sisters announced they would end their involvement with the St Vincent’s Hospital Group (SVHG), something they did officially last week. However, questions surrounding the ownership remain.

What are they?

Dr Peter Boylan, the former master of Holles St and one of the chief sceptics regarding the Sisters’ involvement in the new build, today queried the ownership structure represented by the transfer of ownership of SVHG to a new company — St Vincent’s Holdings — and to what extent the Catholic ethos will govern that entity. It is not possible to commit that no such ethos will be present, he said, given that the correspondence between the Vatican and the Sisters of Charity, pending approval for their transfer of ownership, has never been made public. 

Dr Boylan also queried why a legal structure involving offshore companies is necessary for the new ownership. His concerns were raised in tandem with the ramping up of rhetoric criticising the proposed relocation from the opposition parties in the Dáil, with the Social Democrats decrying the "murky" nature nature of the deal.

Is the Government listening?

Belatedly, yes. A long-planned press conference for Tuesday evening at the Department of Health to announce the relocation was hastily reformatted to see Health Minister Stephen Donnelly announce that any decision would be delayed by two weeks on the back of the “legitimate” concerns being expressed. By way of reassurance, he said that the board of the new hospital will have additional State representation, and that all legal documentation regarding the deal will be published.

Will it be enough?

It’s hard to say. The Government certainly appears committed to the build, but if 24 hours is a lifetime in politics, two weeks is an epoch.