The most intriguing thing about the huge row that erupted between the most senior figures in the National Maternity Hospital is that it was all played out in the medium preferred by teenagers and 20 somethings - phone messaging.
You would expect discourse to be civil between a former Master (Peter Boylan), the vice-chair who was until recently the president of the High Court (Nicholas Kearns), and the current Master (Rhona Mahony). Instead the exchanges were intemperate enough to almost qualify as shaming. Boylan told the other two they would sink or swim with the Minister after being misled by St Vincent's Hospital. Kearns, in response, demanded Boylan's resignation.
The row had its source in an article by Irish Times religious affairs correspondent Patsy McGarry which highlighted the Catholic ethos of St Vincent’s Hospital.
He reported that when Archbishop John Charles McQuaid opened the new hospital in Elm Park in 1970, he said: "It is the unchanging character of a Catholic hospital that every member of its staff accepts with clear assent and fulfils with scrupulous exactitude the moral law that regulates their therapy, medical and surgical."
That article, and subsequent comments by Bishop Kevin Doran of Elphin about Catholic facilities acting within canon law, that spurred Boylan to respond in the media. That, and his texts to Kearns and Mahony (his sister-in-law) created the split that has emerged between them.
Suddenly the deal brokered by Kieran Mulvey last November looked in jeopardy with Minister for Health Simon Harris expressing new concerns about ownership.
Underlying it all is a public miasma - there is little sympathy for religious orders because of the mounting number of scandals that are associated with institutions run by nuns and priests.
Yesterday, other voices began to prevail, paving a path for resolution. Another former Master, clinical director Declan Keane, said that all procedures available in the hospital, and allowable under Irish law, would be provided in the new facility, located within the St Vincent's campus.
Around the same time as Keane’s intervention, the board of St Vincent’s ramped up the rhetoric. It accused Boylan of making “continued misinformation and untruthful allegations” about the medical care women will receive when the NMH transfers from Holles Street.
"Continuing to suggest that procedures currently undertaken at NMH will not be available in the new maternity hospital is entirely false and without foundation," said James Menton, chairman of the board in the statement.
As Paul Cullen and Pat Leahy report, the project now looks like it is back on track.
It is likely that there will be divisions and heated exchanges at tonight’s meeting. Boylan has inisted he will not resign. Don’t be expecting too many texts from the meeting with thumbs up emojis.
