Sir, – You report on the appointment of a new chair of St Vincent’s Healthcare Group (“St Vincent’s Healthcare Group announces Conall O’Halloran as new chair”, News, July 26). I note with concern that Mr O’Halloran states that “a priority for the board will be the transfer and integration of maternity services from Holles Street to a new purpose-built hospital at SVHG”. This is a clear statement on the record confirming my long-held warnings that the original intention of co-location of the two hospitals has been abandoned in favour of the hazardous step of integrating maternity services into those of a general hospital. The National Maternity Hospital (NMH) is nowhere mentioned in the statement.
Two key points should be noted. First, the new hospital was planned more than a decade ago for 10,000 births a year. However demographics, including falling birth rates and numbers in Ireland, especially in the NMH/SVHG catchment area of south county Dublin have resulted in births at the NMH falling 31 per cent in the period to around 6,800 per annum in 2022, the lowest numbers since 1994. Thus, excess capacity is built in to the new hospital for decades to come, according to all demographic projections.
By contrast, the 2022 census confirms rising birth numbers in the north and west of Dublin and surrounding counties where younger families live. There is an urgent need for enhanced maternity services in these areas.
Second, there are at least two gaping holes in the 299 year lease signed by the HSE and SVHG which will permit St Vincent’s to take over excess capacity in the new hospital. In the definition of “permitted use” on page five, the lease acknowledges that while the “primary” (not sole) services to be provided are maternity and gynaecology, the new building can host “any other public healthcare service or services”. These of course could include hip, knee and cataract operations or cardiology services required by the ageing catchment population of SVHG.
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The “demise” section (pages nine to ten, clause c) gives sole authority for changing the “permitted use” of the hospital to “the consent of the landlord”. The landlord is of course SVHG – not the HSE, nor the Government.
These points should give immediate pause to the Government, the Department of Health and the HSE in their stubborn and quixotic determination to build the wrong hospital in the wrong place. As the facts have changed over more than 10 years – not least the increase in the estimated build cost from €150 million to around €1 billion – the Government appears to be bent on throwing good money after bad.
When the Cabinet agreed earlier this month that the new hospital proceed to tender, the Minister for Health stated that it will be “the biggest and most important investment in women’s healthcare in Ireland in decades”. Has the Minister or the Government ever stopped to wonder why the response to this statement among women and women’s representative groups ranges from silence to concern and outright opposition? Have they even considered the country’s changing demographics?
The most recent NMH annual report available (2021) records that just one woman in the entire year was transferred to SVHG for interventional radiology. Meanwhile, earlier this week you reported on a woman who suffered a stroke as she went into labour with her second baby. The patient recalled that instead of being transferred to St Vincent’s, “the ambulance driver called. Instead of going to St Vincent’s and then being referred to Beaumont Hospital, we went straight to Beaumont. I feel so incredibly lucky that he made that decision.”
Beaumont is home to the lead national thrombectomy service.
In addition, the Government still refuses to demand sight of the conditions set by the Vatican for the transfer of the Sisters of Charity’s ownership of SVHG to St Vincent’s Holdings in a clear failure of due diligence. The Catholic Church must have no place setting conditions for women’s reproductive healthcare in Ireland. Until the secret correspondence on this is made public, there can be no certainty on this point.
I urge the Government to reconsider the folly of investing €1 billion or more of public money in the wrong maternity hospital in the wrong place with the wrong ownership. The women of Ireland deserve better. – Yours, etc,
Dr PETER BOYLAN,
(Former Master
and Life Governor,
National Maternity Hospital),
Dublin 6.