Bannasidhe wrote: » Absolutely. And it lets govt off the hook by creating another layer between it and service users. I'm thinking in particular of charities who receive most of their funding from the likes of the HSE. Govt funds HSE/HSE funds charity/Charity delivers services the HSE have deemed worthy of supporting.
lazygal wrote: » Delivering essential services via charities needs to cease. It creates a toxic culture.
Bannasidhe wrote: » Who ever controls the Soc Dems twitter account is going off about this.
lazygal wrote: » Why the **** can't we just have the state own the stuff we build instead of having bloody religious charities all over the place. No more money for any religious charities, we should control all aspects of anything the state funds.
smacl wrote: » Would you expect any different from the nuns?
Former Master of the National Maternity Hospital Dr Peter Boylan said there remained a “need to know who the real owners of the St Vincent’s Hospital Group (SVH CLG) are.” The relevant “memorandum and articles of association need to be seen,” he said. “What precise area of land is being alienated [transferred]?” he asked, and he questioned whether it would include the car park, St Vincent’s Private Hospital and St Michael’s Hospital in Dún Laoghaire. He believed correspondence on the matter between the Sisters of Charity and the Vatican “should be placed in the public domain and made available for inspection.” In his view governance arrangements for the new National Maternity Hospital should be the same as those for the new National Children’s Hospital which is co-located with St James’s Hospital, with “separate governance, a different board, separate clinical governance, and a separate budget,” he said. “We need more clarity on what it (Sisters of Charity announcement) actually means,” he said. Social Democrats co-leader Róisín Shortall s welcomed the Sisters’ announcement but pointed out that the new arrangement “does not constitute public ownership of the site.” She said today’s development “should be seen as just the first stage in a process where SVH CLG should now be required to transfer ownership of the site to the State. The public investment in the new hospital, of up to €500m, must be protected by public ownership of the site on which it is built.” A new National Maternity Hospital was “badly needed and it is regrettable that it is taking so long to get to a situation where this much needed project can proceed. Today’s announcement can only be seen as stage one of a process where the State can legally own this site and stage two must entail the ownership of the site transferring to State,” she said. “We also need assurances that the governance structure of the new maternity hospital will be fully independent and separate to the corporate structure of St Vincent’s Holdings CLG. The governance structure proposed in the Mulvey report does not provide that independence,” she said.
Bannasidhe wrote: » I am beginning to detect the stench of slight of hand...
Hotblack Desiato wrote: » Hmmm... not convinced tbh. Who are the trustees going to be? Who appoints them? Who holds them accountable? Funding charities to deliver state services is not good enough.https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/0529/878662-st-vincents-religious-sisters-of-charity/
the completion of transfer of ownership of the St Vincent's Healthcare Group site from the Congregation to a new, independent, charitable body to be called St Vincent’s Holdings CLG.
He said a majority of his concerns regarding the new maternity hospital have been alleviated but that a few things need to be straightened out. Dr Boylan said the first is the structure of the charity that is being formed, to ensure it is not what is known as a "public juridic person". This is a structure, he said, which Roman Catholic organisations use to divest themselves of land and property and its structure obeys canon law as opposed to State law. If the charity is such a structure, he said, he would be extremely concerned as it would be subject to canon law and not State law. He said clarity is needed on this issue. Dr Boylan also said he thinks that the structure of the board of the new hospital has to be properly constructed so that there are a greater number of National Maternity Hospital representatives on the board. He said he believed that St Vincent's needs to have representation, as it is on their campus, but nothing like what was proposed to initially. Dr Boylan also said the master of the NMH needs to report to the board of the NMH not to the Vincent’s Hospital Group Clinical Director.
AIMSI Ireland, which represents maternity service users, welcomed the fact that there has been a change of heart and that the Sisters of Charity are going to relinquish their control over the SVHG. Speaking to RTÉ News, AIMSI chairperson Krysia Lynch said, however, that it was unclear how the members of the board would be appointed, what exercise the Government and State would have over the new company, and who the new charitable company would report to.
