Unions to meet Mount Carmel liquidators tomorrow

Unions representing staff at Mount Carmel Hospital in Dublin are due to meet with the liquidator tomorrow for an update on the winding down of the hospital.

It comes after Siptu and the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation called on the National Asset Management Agency to enter negotiations with any potential buyers to maintain the future of the hospital.

Siptu health division organiser Paul Bell yesterday said the union "believes the Government should intervene to tell Nama to get the best offer for the hospital" adding that it was in nobody's interest for a "state-of the-art facility being turned into a derelict site".

He said it was not in the interest of the State to pay redundancies and potential social welfare payments to over 300 staff, some of who had worked at the hospital for over 30 years.

The call was echoed by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, which represents around 200 nurses and midwives at the hospital, which is also calling for the Government to intervene to encourage Nama to find a buyer for the hospital: “We don’t accept there is a credible basis for closing the hospital,” industrial relations officer with the INMO, Philip McAnenly said.

However, sources familiar with the process suggested last night that, while the possibility still existed for a potential offer to be made, an exhaustive process to try to identify a buyer for the hospital had been without success and that it was now unlikely a credible offer would emerge.

The hospital’s 328 staff will qualify for statutory redundancy of two weeks’ pay per year of service plus one further week’s pay subject to a maximum earnings limit of €600 per week.

Meanwhile a spokeswoman for the liquidator, RSM Farrell Grant Sparks, said that calls had now been made to in excess of 400 maternity patients to date as consultants continue to contact expectant mothers to discuss alternative maternity arrangements.

A helpline set up on Friday to deal with queries from Mount Carmel patients had received 600 calls by yesterday evening.

In a statement yesterday the HSE said it was continuing to work with Mount Carmel to transfer all patients - including maternity patients, in-patients and out-patients - to other facilities.

A spokeswoman for the HSE said that all maternity patients at the hospital would continue to receive necessary and appropriate care until discharge agreements were reached with alternative maternity hospitals.

“Mothers will be given a choice of which hospital/consultant they will attend and transfer arrangements will then be effected in a timely manner.

“All other inpatients in the hospital will continue to receive all necessary and appropriate care until discharge,” the HSE spokeswoman said.

A ‘Save Mount Carmel’ Facebook page set up to for staff and patients to voice their opinion on the impending closure of the hospital had attracted over 5,000 ‘likes’ yesterday evening, a day after the page was first set up.