FuzzyThinking wrote: » What I don’t get is that basically the proposed operator appears to be unable to operate the services due to ethos issues. The contracts should be torn up on that basis and a new arrangement made. Why are we going down the road of basically being shoehorned into yet another religious hospital, against what seems to be the mainstream political will. Seems the state has Stockholm Syndrome. From a voter and citizens’ point of view I just constantly see a state that cares about sponsors and powerful vested interests’ needs being satisfied, far more than about delivery of public services. It seems to be how we do health and education - check what the ‘sponsors’ want, take our taxes and sure what has it got to do with the public - the people actually paying for it? It’s like we have drifted into running everything in the interests of what are basically outsourcers / service providers, rather than focusing on delivery of public services. The tail is wagging the dog.
Yareli Helpful Clock wrote: » It's not a few "edge" cases though. People are routinely gouged for parking (or worse) when attending hospital, more often than not in distressing circumstances. A charge for parking is a barrier in the way of healthcare, which can be very difficult for people to afford.
lazygal wrote: » If you're in serious trouble as a patient of Holles St you're taken to St Vincent's. I know several friends referred by HS in emergency situations like this. So there is a link there already. I had chosen to have tubal ligation during a section, something St Vincent's won't do. There has to be some sort of ripping off of the band aid when it comes to the State funding services it doesn't control to the tune of billions of euro every year.
aloyisious wrote: » On an aside, if the tubal ligation was refused on ethical and not medical grounds, I suppose vasectomies would be on the ethical NO list as well at St Vincent's public [whatever about the Private] hospital.
aloyisious wrote: » It's seems they are NOT poor [in as far as wealth and being mendicant go] and the order gifted the site to the new SVHG for the purpose of running the new NMH as part of the integrated St Vincent's Hospital operating within the SVHG. The SVHG board, which will include persons appointed by the order, will be in charge of all the hospitals on the St Vincent's site AND St Michaels Hospital in Dun Laoghaire. The wording in the St Vincent's letter from the board of the SVHG to the Dep't of Health [IMO] were not carelessly chosen words where it comes to the group's plans on governance at the whole hospital inclusive of the planned new on-site NMH.
Yellow_Fern wrote: » Even if they wanted to make it catholic they wouldn't have the voting power.
The whole saga is just charging at windmills for political gain. Sadly there is zero risk of any Catholic management at the new NMH. This is all set in stone in company law years ago.
Yareli Helpful Clock wrote: » CPO is probably the only way the state will get the land now. This will be hundreds of millions more
Hotblack Desiato wrote: » You continue to state this but it is groundless. The site has zero development value.
Yareli Helpful Clock wrote: » It has been reported widely that the commercial value of the land is in the region of 100/200 million. CPO must pay the market value of the site, and anyway can only be done if it can be established that it is necessary and proportionate. Good luck proving that in an instance where free use of the land is being offered. I would also suggest that "proving" that prime land in D4 is worth zero will be an uphill battle also.
Yellow_Fern wrote: » If they end up CPOing it, it will be an immense failure of the last two governments. A unnecessary massive bill and a massive delay. I don't know who deserves more blame, the opposition for driving this, or the government for a massive failure in communication or the protest groups who should have thought this through. If it was sold for agricultural prices through CPO (I guess half a million) it is the time delay that is a killer. Takes at least a year.
Sir, - It is just over four years since I resigned from the board of the National Maternity Hospital, detailing my concerns about the ownership of the land on which the planned new hospital will be built at Elm Park and the ownership and governance arrangements of the new hospital facility. Successive governments have been unable to resolve these core issues in a way that will both safeguard public investment and guarantee the availability of the full range of legal reproductive healthcare services, free of Catholic ethos. I welcome the statement by Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, in the Dáil last Thursday, that the Government has "big concerns" about these core issues. Mr Varadkar noted that the land will be owned by a private charity (St Vincent's Holdings) rather than the State, with only a 99-year lease being provided and that the Government "does not think the safeguards around that are strong enough". He also raised the problems relating to the proposed governance structure, noting that "the board will not be appointed by the government, and that's a real difficulty too, because a hospital that is fully funded by the State or almost fully funded by the State should have a significant number or majority of members of the board appointed by the government". In relation to the question of Catholic ethos, he called for the constitution of St Vincent's Holdings - which will own the NMH DAC, the company that will operate the new hospital - to explicitly state in its constitution and memorandum of association that the new hospital will provide abortion, IVF, contraception and other services which are absolutely prohibited by Catholic teaching. Without the resolution of these issues, he stated that the Government has "problems, quite frankly, going forward with this project". As matters stand, the only way that the Government's concerns can be satisfactorily addressed is for the State to own the land on which the hospital is to be built, and for the governance and ownership arrangements of the new NMH to be revisited in full so that the NMH DAC - the company which will operate the new hospital - is not owned by St Vincent's Holdings but is fully secular and State-owned, with a board reflective of that reality. On the part of the State this will require the setting aside of the Mulvey report and a complete revision of the ownership and governance of the new hospital. On the St Vincent's side, the Religious Sisters of Charity will need to make a fresh alienation application to the Vatican, specifically to the Congregation of the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, headed by Cardinal Joao Braz de Avis. This application will need the support of the Primate of All Ireland, Archbishop Eamon Martin; the Archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Farrell; and the Papal Nuncio to Ireland, Archbishop Jude Okolo, by way of a statement of "Nihil Obstat" (no objection) to the Order's plans to either sell the site to the State or, better still, fulfil the commitment made by the Sisters in May 2017 to "gift" the site to the "people of Ireland" in the form of the State. I do not believe that a compulsory purchase order of the site at Elm Park is achievable in view of several articles of the constitution. Indeed, The Irish Times reports that "the State has tried everything possible to buy the land the new hospital will be built on but has failed to do so" (News, June 18th). The Tánaiste has now clarified the issues that must be resolved in order for the new NMH project to proceed at St Vincent's. That the Irish State, in 2021, depends on a decision of the Vatican to proceed with the building of a State-funded secular maternity hospital speaks volumes about the need to separate Church and State in the provision of healthcare. This is an opportunity to break that connection and a test case of the State's resolve. - Yours, etc, Dr PETER BOYLAN, Dublin 6.
Yareli Helpful Clock wrote: » I would also suggest that "proving" that prime land in D4 is worth zero will be an uphill battle also.
Peregrinus wrote: » It has huge development value. It's zoned Z15, "institutional and community uses", Even without a variation that would permit the use of the land for educational institutions, retirement communities, etc, which could be commercial developments. A housing component will usually be readily approved as part of such a development, given the priority attached to providing housing in the city, so long as open spaces are also retained. So, yeah, considerable potential.
Furthermore, if the hospital were to close (which of course it would if the state ceased to fund it) then the the Z15 zoning would be reconsidered, because it would no longer be required to facilitate the hospital.
So the state can't on the one hand say that it won't fund the hospital running on the site, and on the other hand insist on buying the land at a value which assumes it can only be used to run a hospital or similar.
aloyisious wrote: » SVHG have stated that the site where the new NMH is to be built is NOT for sale. The order did not make that statement. It seems plain from that statement that SVHG totally owns the site and that the order does not own or control the site AND has totally stepped away from SVHG and the site, if one is to accept at face value that the order has no control or ability to "steer" decisions made by the SVHG board which it approved of when it set up the SVHG. One problem with that thesis is that the order has NOT YET gifted the site to anyone or any group. That being a legal fact one can't scoot around, it makes it obvious that the order is using the SVHG it set up as an implement to play with anyone interested in having a new NMH built and operated with the medical independence that Holles St NMH has. Even the RC archbishop of Dublin stepped away from the position he held in respect of Holles St NMH, something the order plainly does NOT intend to do if and when the new NMH is built at St Vincent's Hospital grounds. That mean's, IMO, the order is putting the medical maternal care AND SERVICES provided at Holles St NMH which is supposed to be transferred to the new NMH to be built at St Vincent's aside in place of the order's own ethics where it comes to the provision of medical maternity care.
Hotblack Desiato wrote: » But there is no hospital on the site...
Yellow_Fern wrote: » For that theory to be put it would mean senior doctors like Dr. Rhona Mahony who is on this board, has become a puppet of the Order. Dr. Rhona Mahony is an inlaw of Boylan and isn't known for conservative views. It is more plausible that the board, for its own strategic reasons, don't want to sell the land because they want to be in control of the NMH.
aloyisious wrote: » Re Dr Mahony, it has been reported in various Irish papers over the past few years that she had a falling-out with Dr Boylan over the issue of SVHG and the proposed building of the new NMH at St Vincent's Elm Park campus. Both doctors do not see eye to eye on the plan. Dr Mahony would probably, from her time as master at Holles ST NMH and being aware of the failings of that old building, have the best interests of women's maternal care in mind where a new modern NMH is concerned. I don't see her putting other interests above her duties to women there.
MrMusician18 wrote: » One thing that's puzzled me about this controversy is that the state agreed to this arrangement a few years ago, when the same faces were in power, and only now it's a problem? It just looks like politically its suits to kick up about this now.
aloyisious wrote: » The deal was worked out after an intermediary [Kieran Mulvey] experienced in working out deals between reluctant partners was asked to look into the matter of arranging a workable deal between Holles St NMH and the SVHG. Corporate responsibility for the new NMH seems to be at the centre of the row, what the term means in the real-time, running of the hospital down to non-medical ethics or just running the hospital as a working medical hospital. The nuns and the SVHG kicking up a political row, perish the thought. On an aside, mention was made today on behalf of the SVHG that tubal ligation surgeries are now carried out in the hospitals run by the group.https://www.thejournal.ie/national-maternity-hospital-agreement-3358407-Apr2017/
aloyisious wrote: » As the order has not yet gifted the site to anyone, just talked about that being a possibility [to apparently enable Holles St NMH move to the proposed new NMH there] the SVHG would have no apparent right to try sell on the site in its own right as it does not legally own or have charge of the site from the order. Re Dr Mahony, it has been reported in various Irish papers over the past few years that she had a falling-out with Dr Boylan over the issue of SVHG and the proposed building of the new NMH at St Vincent's Elm Park campus. Both doctors do not see eye to eye on the plan. Dr Mahony would probably, from her time as master at Holles ST NMH and being aware of the failings of that old building, have the best interests of women's maternal care in mind where a new modern NMH is concerned. I don't see her putting other interests above her duties to women there. So much mention has been made of the SVHG control and and not selling the site that people seem to be taken it as a fact that it controls the site. Even today, according to RTE, the health minister talked about talks with St Vincent Healthcare Group and not St Vincent Hospital Group. The latter group was set up in 2001 to strive to maintain excellence in clinical, multi-disciplinary care, education and research alongside it's other hospitals and with responsibilities to the wider Irish healthcare system, the former group seems to have disappeared from the internet when a search is started for it despite it being in existence very recently. It's possible it's been assimilated by the 2001 SVHG, for clarity purposes when it comes to the SVHG acronym.
Bannasidhe wrote: » The protest groups should have thought this through? The govt who agreed this deal either didn't think it through or are so out of touch with the zeitgeist they seriously miscalculated how the majority of the Irish electorate have had enough of roseries anywhere next or near ovaries in our publicly funded healthcare system..
Spanish Eyes wrote: » Forgive me now, but just musing here. There must be some cachet attached to Holles Street hospital moving further into South County Dublin alright. Couldn't be having it within the canals now could we? For example, there was a large chunk of land (Player Wills site) beside the Coombe Women's hospital that could have been used for the new maternity hospital surely? Practically on the site of the Coombe, and within a few hundred metres of St. James and the new children's hospital. No religious ethos/shenanigans involved. Makes too much sense I suppose, and maybe SOME would baulk at having to travel further into the badlands than Merrion Square or Elm Park. Instead of the land being gifted though, it would have had to be paid for. But look at what's happening now? Years more delay I reckon. Am I just being a bad person for thinking this? But anyway as far as I know all development land around the Coombe has been earmarked for housing.
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