Grave risks for hospital

Top doctor’s ten-page warning to Taoiseach

THE former master of the National Maternity Hospital has written to the Taoiseach to warn of ‘grave risks’ over the Government’s plans to build the new hospital on the St Vincent’s Hospital campus.

Dr Peter Boylan wrote a tenpage letter to Micheál Martin last night ahead of Health Minister Stephen Donnelly bringing a memo to Cabinet today on the construction of the hospital at the Elm Park site.

Under a draft agreement being considered by Government, the south Dublin site will be leased to the State for 299 years from St Vincent’s Healthcare Group.

It comes days after the transfer of the Religious Sisters of Charity’s shareholding in the St Vincent’s Hospital Group to a new group, St Vincent’s Holdings CLG, was completed. It was granted permission to make the transfer by the Holy See. Dr Boylan said until conditions set by the Holy See in relation to the transfer are made public, the Government can’t guarantee the new hospital will not be governed by a Catholic ethos. He wrote: ‘In the absence of the full correspondence with Rome being made available for public and/or parliamentary scrutiny, it is not possible for the Government to make any commitment that Catholic ethos will not govern St Vincent’s Holdings and therefore the operation of the relocated National Maternity Hospital which will – as the plan currently stands – be owned and controlled by St Vincent’s Holdings.’

Last week, the superior general of the Religious Sisters of Charity, St Patricia Lenihan, said the group will have ‘no role in the future of the new independent charity, the St Vincent’s Healthcare Group, St Vincent’s Holding CLG or the Maternity Hospital’.