Maternity hospital controversy: NMH call for resignation is sinister

The former secretary general of the Department of Justice, Brian Purcell, left that position in July 2014. They left because of a perception, later refuted, that they had mishandled the whistleblowers’ controversy or presided over, as a Government review found, a “closed, secretive, silo-driven culture”. That episode influenced the Protected Disclosures Act 2014, a mechanism to protect those who feel morally obliged to challenge the consensus of institutional behaviour or policy.
Against that background, it is at least perplexing if not sinister, that former master of the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) and whistleblower Dr Peter Boylan has been asked to resign from the NMH board because he expressed strong reservations about the deal reached last November over ownership of the proposed €300m , publicly funded NMH. The hospital will be, it is proposed, owned by the Sisters of Charity. He was asked to stand down by the hospital’s deputy chairman, former High Court president Nicholas Kearns.