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.
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/
Bannasidhe wrote: » I am beginning to detect the stench of slight of hand...
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.
smacl wrote: » Would you expect any different from the nuns?
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.
Bannasidhe wrote: » Who ever controls the Soc Dems twitter account is going off about this.
lazygal wrote: » Delivering essential services via charities needs to cease. It creates a toxic culture.
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.
branie2 wrote: » Great thing to do.
It is eight years since the project to co-locate the new National Maternity Hospital (NMH) at the Elm Park campus of St Vincent’s hospital was announced. Four years ago, a wave of public outrage followed the realisation, after years of dispute and mediation, that the new NMH would be owned 100 per cent by the Religious Sisters of Charity, then and still today the sole shareholders of St Vincent’s Healthcare Group (SVHG). In May 2017, the Sisters announced their intention to depart their hospitals and “gift to people [sic] of Ireland lands at SVHG to the value of €200 million”. In fact, the shareholding is to be transferred for €1 into a new company called St Vincent’s Holdings which has charitable status. Assurances were given that this process would be straightforward and ensure that Catholic ethos would not impact on women’s reproductive healthcare at the new hospital. The congregation’s leader stated that the “core values” of the constitution of SVHG that mandate its Catholic ethos would be “amended and replaced”. What happened next was far from straightforward. It emerged in 2018, despite repeated denials, that Vatican permission was in fact needed for the Sisters’ shareholding transfer, called “alienation” in canon law. Last May, we learned that the Vatican had granted permission conditional on the Sisters observing specified canon laws. An earlier warning was sounded in the 2018 SVHG Annual Report which stated unambiguously that the directors of St Vincent’s Holdings must uphold into the future “the values and vision” of Mother Mary Aikenhead, the order’s founder. When the constitution of St Vincent’s Holdings was published last August, with the “core values” of the Sisters included in full, the retention of Catholic ethos was undeniable and brought into question once again the future independence of the NMH. As Róisín Shortall TD pointed out at the Oireachtas select committee on health last week, reproductive health services such as sterilisations or contraception were not provided to women at St Vincent’s hospital and it was hard to see how that situation would change under the new structure. Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly responded that no religious ethos could be imposed at the planned new maternity hospital that would impact on services under any circumstances. It was “an absolute red line”, he said. If so, then we seem to have reached it. There are other issues raised by the new structure that are a cause for concern. St Vincent’s Holdings is a company limited by guarantee. This means it does not have shareholders and is owned by its members who are also its directors. They will effectively own the three SVHG hospitals and putatively the new NMH. The company must have at least three directors and no more than 10. The power to appoint new directors lies with the existing directors. There are currently three directors, who are also directors of SVHG and no directors representing the NMH, the State or the Health Service Executive, and no guarantee of representation in the constitution. The directors have the power to sell, mortgage or dispose of any or all part of the company. This is particularly concerning given that in 2010 the Sisters mortgaged St Vincent’s University Hospital as collateral for a loan to build the private hospital. In consequence, Bank of Ireland has “a fixed charge over the entire St Vincent’s hospital site” and “a floating charge over all the undertakings, property and assets of SVHG both present and future”. As with Donnelly’s “red line” on services, the new structure is in conflict with then taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s commitment to the Dáil in November 2019 that the new NMH would be “State-owned on State land”. To date, however, St Vincent’s is offering the State no more than a 99-year lease on the land and is insisting on owning the new NMH DAC, the yet-to-be-incorporated company that will run the new hospital. This in turn falls foul of the 2019 Report on the Role of Voluntary Organisations which recommended that “where the State decides to build any new hospital or facility, it should endeavour to ensure that it owns the land on which the hospital or facility is built”. So what can be done at this late stage? As with all major capital projects costing more than €100 million, the Department for Public Expenditure and Reform must make a full financial and economic appraisal of the project, and assess matters of governance and project risks before issuing to Government for a decision. Since two of the SVHG hospitals are section 38 organisations – funded by the State and classified as public services – the HSE must approve (or not) the transfer, establishing with certainty that there is no risk of future problems with the provision of services. The Government must consider the implications for Sláintecare and the likely public reaction to the gifting of the State’s newest publicly funded hospital to a private company with stated Catholic ethos. An all-party Oireachtas group has recently been established to lobby for full State ownership and independence of the new hospital. Public interest remains high. We have reached a watershed. Could the State attempt a compulsory purchase order on the land at Elm Park? Constitutional protection conferred on religious orders makes this likely to fail. SVHG is largely publicly funded so could the Sisters transfer it to the State instead, not for €1 but with appropriate valuation of their assets? Canon law would raise serious, perhaps intractable, obstacles. What if the impasse cannot be resolved? The original rationale of the project was to provide access to acute and intensive care services for women with complicated pregnancies. Could this critical objective be met in the interim by locating a high-risk maternity unit at St James’s Hospital, giving pregnant women from all over the country access to the full range of clinical specialities, and their infants immediate access to the new National Children’s Hospital? This would achieve the gold standard of tri-location of maternity, adult and neonatal and paediatric services. Concerns that the 1930s Holles Street building was “not fit for purpose” have been significantly mitigated by ongoing investment. New operating theatres, labour rooms and a neonatal intensive care unit have been built in recent years. The postnatal wards have been refurbished and new office and teaching space has been acquired in an adjacent building. It is the only maternity hospital in the State with a dedicated MRI facility thanks to private charitable donations. The current impasse does not serve the women of Ireland. Fresh thinking is now required.
Medical ethics in Irish hospitals Sir, – Dr Peter Boylan has once again warned that the Sisters of Charity through either St Vincent’s Healthcare Group (SVHG) or a new charitable company, St Vincent’s Holdings, are doing everything possible to gain ownership and control of the new National Maternity Hospital (“Fresh thinking on National Maternity Hospital impasse vital”, Opinion & Analysis, May 5th). If they succeed the implication is that the new hospital, as part of St Vincent’s, will be required to adhere to Catholic medical ethics. This is not a unique case. We should remember that quite a number of hospitals which are controlled by Catholic organisations require staff to adhere to Catholic medical ethics when treating patients. This has meant that many patients, mostly women, have not received medical care or advice that would be considered the most appropriate in leading non-Catholic hospitals in Ireland and worldwide. Even hospitals outside the formal control of Catholic organisations have found it difficult to avoid objections of Catholic staff to the provision of medical care not approved by the church. It is long overdue for the Oireachtas to legislate to the effect that publicly funded hospitals must offer and provide all medical treatments within their medical competence that are permitted by law. It should be illegal for hospitals such as St Vincent’s, the Mater, Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children and the new National Maternity Hospital not to consider or provide treatments on the grounds that they are forbidden by the Catholic Church. A Bill to this effect, which should be easy to draft, should also apply to private hospitals and clinics that treat publicly funded patients. – Yours, etc, AIDAN PENDER, Chairman, DAVID McCONNELL, Honorary President, The Humanist Association of Ireland, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin.
Hotblack Desiato wrote: » A couple of weeks old at this stage
robindch wrote: » Have to say that the Religious Sisters of Charity are getting first-rate, top-dollar legal advice. So far as I can make out from the incomplete picture implied by the legal terms arising, the religious orders are running rings around government lawyers who, one suspects, have been instructed to do nothing to upset them, and especially, to avoid any hint that the state could use its own power to resolve the situation easily and quickly.
Peregrinus wrote: » . . . but not cheaply, which may be the reason for not going down that road. If we accept the valuation quoted in the Irish Times article that you link to, it would cost €200 million to CPO the land.
robindch wrote: » Open to correction on a legal point here, but if the land is settled into a trust which specifies that the land can only ever be used for the provision of hospital services by the state - rather than seeing it auctioned off on the open market to property developers at the market rate, where it may indeed fetch €200m - then essentially the land has no value as there is only one possible customer and it may as well be transferred for one euro.
robindch wrote: » The religious orders instituted similar schemes when transferring schools as part of the residential abuse settlement - they were paid at the market rate for their properties, or their bill was reduced by an amount equivalent to the open-market value of their properties, but the lands were settled so that the state would never be able to realize that value. Ten out of ten for cynicism and effective legal footwork on the part of the religious orders, and zero out of ten for Joe Public who got screwed.
Peregrinus wrote: » The effect of CPO-ing the land is to take it out of the trust, so the use restriction no longer applies, so the state realises the full open market value of the land, and CPO compensation must be calculated accordingly.
Peregrinus wrote: » If the religious orders get full value for their land (either in cash or as an abatement to the amount owing by way of redress) then it makes no difference at all to them whether the land is subsequently used for a school or for some other purpose; continue use as a school doesn't increase the financial benefit to the religious order by one cent.
Hotblack Desiato wrote: » Follow-up letter from HAI:https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/medical-ethics-in-irish-hospitals-1.4564471
Yareli Helpful Clock wrote: » Well, the obvious solution here to his problem is for public funding to hospitals that have owners that he disapproves of to cease, and for these hospitals to no longer operate as public hospitals, but rather as private ones. As the largest non-governmental provider of healthcare in the world, as well as running numerous very successful private hospitals in Ireland, the Church and Orders are quite capable of running hospitals without the state. Or failing that, the owners can do whatever else they want with their lands should private operation prove to not be economically viable. (Although I am not sure how he proposes to replace the healthcare generously facilitated and provided by the Church/Orders.)
Bannasidhe wrote: » Sounds ideal. The church can run it's private hospitals without any funds from the State in any shape or form and the State can fund public hospitals where the laws of the land and not the ethos of one religion determine healthcare provision. If the church as so capable off they trot.
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