Rotunda board seeks meeting with minister over maternity care row 

Rotunda officials said that because there is no private maternity hospital in Ireland, it has continued to permit the practice in order to provide women with choice. File picture: Sam Boal/Collins

The board of the Rotunda Hospital wants to meet the health minister to discuss its decision to allow consultants to carry out private work while on public-only contracts.

The board met on Friday and discussed its correspondence from the HSE and Department of Health on the matter.

Under the public-only consultants contract, doctors cannot carry out private work in their public workplaces and may only do so off-site after completing their public duties.

Minister: Hospital should treat women equally

Rotunda officials said that because there is no private maternity hospital in Ireland, it has continued to permit the practice in order to provide women with choice.

Health minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said on Friday that she had asked the hospital to ensure it had "rescinded this practice for which they have no permission".

She said women who paid for private care for this year should be recompensed. Ms Carroll MacNeill told RTÉ: 

We pay the salaries, we pay the heat, the light, all of the different things that you would expect in a publicly funded hospital, and we expect the women there to be treated with equality. 

The board said it had decided in September 2024 to allow private practice to continue. It now wants to tell the minister about "the rationale and impact of this decision, and to seek a way forward to resolve this issue for the common good of all patients". 

Separately HSE South West said no exceptions to the public-only contract have been made at Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH) or in the maternity unit at University Hospital Kerry (UHK).

HSE Cork/Kerry phasing out old practice

In Cork and Kerry, private care in HSE hospitals is being phased out as consultants switch to the new contract, as is happening nationally. 

A HSE South West spokeswoman said: “There were no exceptions made for obstetricians and/or gynaecologists who opted for the [public-only consultant contract] to continue with private work on-site.” 

She said 66% of CUMH consultants have signed up to the contract, while among the remainder, “some do not provide obstetric care as part of their role”.

In UHK 85% of its obstetricians and gynaecologists are on the new contract.

Ms Carroll MacNeill said there is no private maternity hospital in the country because “they can’t get the insurance to do that, because the cost of a birth injury, of cerebral palsy or a different birth injury, that only the State is in a position to underpin that". 

INMO calls for more options  

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation called for expansion of maternity options such as home birth services and midwifery-led hospital services of which there are only two in Ireland.

INMO general secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha said: “The current maternity strategy expires this year without full implementation, and it is now time for the ethos of women’s choice in a modern public health service to be fully recognised.” 

She called for “ a fully modern maternity strategy” which should include developing more services outside of hospitals with a midwifery-led care model part of the choices.