Opening of Cork maternity hospital put off for one week

The opening if the new €75 million Cork University Maternity Hospital has been postponed for a week after a row over staffing levels.

The new hospital, an amalgamation of maternity services from Erinville, St Finbarr's and Bons Secours hospitals, was due to open today but was put off at the last minute when nurses and midwives voted against the move.

The opening was originally put off until 4pm today, but in a statement tonight the Health Service Executive said the opening had been rescheduled for one week until next Saturday, March 31st.

"In the interests of the safety of mothers and babies and the staff working in Cork's maternity services, the preferred option was to reschedule the transfer of maternity services for one week," the statement said.

"This is to facilitate the reorganisation of the major operational logistics of the transfer, termed 'Operation Bambino'."

The Irish Nurses Organisation and Siptu claimed the HSE was trying to open the hospital without adequate staffing levels. The INO has consistently rejected the use of student midwives to bring up staff numbers at the new hospital to recommended levels, even though the HSE points out that student midwives are fully qualified general nurses and are used in other Irish teaching maternity hospitals.

This week the Labour Court ruled in favour of the HSE, saying that nursing staff should co-operate with the opening of the hospital. However, the INO has accused the HSE of misrepresenting the situation when it said it had 375 midwives available when it had only 315.

HSE chief Professor Brendan Drumm said earlier he was "dismayed" at the delay in opening the new state-of-the-art facility.

In a statement Prof Drumm said the number of midwives employed at the new hospital will be higher than previous staffing levels in Cork, the highest in the country and among the highest in the world. He also said the new staffing levels had been accepted by consultants and midwifery management and buy full time officials of the INO.

"What we are experiencing in Cork is reflective of the difficulties being experienced across the country in bringing about real change in the health service and people's resistance to change," Prof Drumm said.

"Representative bodies are very quick to criticise the HSE and highlight service shortfalls. However, while the HSE endeavours to provide state of the art facilities, the interests of patients and clients can unfortunately be treated as secondary to other interests."

Tonight, Tony McNamara, General Manager of the Cork University Hospital Group said: "We are very disappointed that today's transfer did not go ahead. Every effort was made to ensure that patients would move to this wonderful new facility but unfortunately, outstanding IR issues with the INO and Siptu nursing have meant that the transfer must be rescheduled for one week."

Negotiations between the HSE and INO and SIPTU will continue prior to the new opening time at noon next Saturday.

Mr McNamara said that management did not want to "go down the route of threatening disciplinary action" but said if staff did not co-operate with the transfer next week all offers would be taken off the table.

In the mean time all expectant mothers should present to their original booking hospital where necessary. A 24-hour patient information line has been set up on 1850 742628.