The Mater Private Hospital in Dublin is to be sold by the Sisters of Mercy for £22 million, it was announced yesterday. Ownership will be transferred to a management committee with a 15 per cent shareholding being offered to consultants and staff.
A portion of the income from the sale will be used to enhance services at the Mater public hospital, which will become a limited company owned by the Mercy Order. The remainder of the money from the sale, which is to be paid to the nuns over 20 years, will be used to support the sisters' work with people on the margins of society at home and abroad.
Both the Mater private and public hospitals will continue to have a Catholic ethos despite the changes, Sr Helena O'Donoghue, Provincial of the Mercy Congregation, South Central Province, confirmed.
She said the order had, in the light of falling vocations and the expertise required in running hospitals in the 21st century, been considering the changes over the past 18 months.
"It's sad in ways for us but we are very happy with the arrangements now in place and we believe it's best for the future of the hospitals," she said.
Mr Brian Joyce, chairman of the Mater Private Hospital, which was built 15 years ago, said the transition would be "seamless". The conditions of the 500 staff members would remain unchanged and control of the hospital would be vested in the existing directors and senior management, who had put "a certain amount" of money upfront as part of the deal.
A £23 million development programme is under way at the 160-bed hospital and they could look to the future with confidence, he said.
Mr Joyce said the ethics committee of the Mater public hospital would oversee the activities of the Mater Private. "This is a commitment we have given to the Sisters of Mercy so that a Catholic ethos will be maintained," he said.
He added that there would be no increase in hospital charges to finance the buy-out.
Given the heavy debts and borrowings of the Mater Private, Sister O'Donoghue said, the Sisters of Mercy were happy to have the income from its sale phased over two decades. "It is not a commercial transaction," she insisted.
She added that the Mater Public Hospital, with over 2,000 staff, would be run by an executive board of management drawn from the staff, and a board of governors with the Archbishop of Dublin, formerly the honorary chairman of the board of management, as president. Mr Martin Cowley will remain as chief executive.
Over the next seven years Temple Street Hospital will be rebuilt on the Mater campus, and it will in time be absorbed into the limited company running the Mater Misericordiae Hospital. It will, however, have its own executive board of management and chief executive officer. But it will be responsible to the board of governors at the Mater public hospital.