Hospital to the stars to close with €40m debts

MOUNT Carmel, the exclusive private hospital, is to be wound down with the loss of more than 300 jobs after racking up debts of €40million.

The Dublin hospital, which acquired a reputation for delivering the babies of the nation’s famous and wealthy, applied to the High Court yesterday to appoint provisional liquidators.

A total of 328 staff who are to lose their jobs at the hospital, where 25 babies are delivered weekly. The hospital’s 170 patients, including maternity and the elderly, will have their care transferred to other hospitals.

Staff were told the news in an email at around 11.40am yesterday and were left shocked at the closure, which is expected to happen within the next fortnight.

Fears are growing for a number of public patients transferred to Mount Carmel from Dublin’s Beaumont, Tallaght, and Connolly hospitals in Dublin in recent weeks when they were over capacity.

Elective surgeries such as hip replacements have been cancelled from today and arrangements are being made to transfer pregnant women to other maternity hospitals. Another 60 patients will continue to receive care at the hospital as long as they need treatment.

Staff outside the hospital, in Churchtown, south Dublin, yesterday spoke of their devastation.

Fighting back tears, one woman told RTÉ: ‘I’ve been working here for 34 years. I cant believe it, I had no idea. I’ve three children with a mortgage to pay and a ban on recruitment elsewhere, it’s going to be very difficult to get a job.’

Another said: ‘ I’m coming back into this hospital tonight and I may be finishing my job on Sunday. I never thought that would happen as quickly as that.’

Expectant mother Sheana Crean said she did not know what was going to happen to her maternity care.

She said: ‘I’ve now left my name and number six times and to date no-one has called me back.

‘I don’t know whether I will be having my baby there [Mount Carmel] or right here on the Mespil Canal or whether I will be having it in one of the other maternity hospitals, I just don’t know.’

Last night the Irish Independent claimed reps from surgical companies who have equipment in the operating theatres had been arriving at the site yesterday afternoon. One consultant said the reps were ‘up in the operating theatres emptying shelves of all of their equipment’.

The newspaper reported a source as saying the pieces of equipment were on loan and were now being returned. ‘This has never happened in Ireland before to a hospital, which is full of patients. It is absolutely shocking,’ she was reported as saying by the newspaper.

SIPTU representatives who held an emergency meeting yesterday af- ternoon with the provisional liquidators said the union would be ‘seeking to ensure that everything is done to explore all possible avenues to protect the hospital and the jobs associated with it.’ Philip McAnenly, industrial relations officer at the INO union, said: ‘I met more than 200 INO members here today and they’re devastated with the news – many of them with in excess of 28, 29 and 30 years service working in the hospital.

He added: ‘ Transferring patients back into the public service now is going to make an impossible situation... more critical.’

Health Minister James Reilly denied the closure would put pres- sure on the public health service, saying: ‘The birth rate is actually falling. And the HSE have calculated we will still have the capacity in Dublin without Mount Carmel to deal with the number of births in 2014.’

At the High Court Andrew Fitz- patrick, for Mount Carmel’s owners, said the hospital was ‘acutely insolvent’ and had only survived for the last few years as it had the backing of Nama.

But he said Nama had, last Friday, advised the hospital directors it could no longer give this support as it was ‘no longer financially viable’.

He cited problems including falling numbers of patients due to the recession, increased competition and uncertainty over the future.

Afterwards the provisional liquidators said all obstetrics patients scheduled over the coming days would be fully cared for at Mount Carmel.

‘It is envisaged that obstetrics patients who are booked into Mount Carmel for maternity services in the weeks and months ahead will be transferred to alternative maternity hospitals,’ they added.

÷The liquidators have set up a helpline on 01 408 6966, which will operate from 9am to 5pm daily.