“We will continue to work together to deliver appropriate critical care, as quickly as possible,” Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said when announcing the Government was abandoning its plan to co-locate the Rotunda hospital with Connolly hospital in Blanchardstown, west Dublin.
Instead, she said, she would support it remaining in its current location through a new enhanced planning application that would increase critical care capacity for both babies and women, as well as an enhanced sexual assault treatment unit.
The U-turn did not come as a surprise to anyone who has watched the story rumble on in the weeks since An Coimisiún Pleanála refused planning permission for a critical care unit to treat sick newborns.
The hospital has been under increasing pressure in recent years to cope with growing demand for its services and a complexity in the care it provides. It is the busiest maternity hospital in the State and one of the busiest in Europe. In fact, as birth rates in Ireland decline, in the Rotunda they have been seeing annual increases.
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It is clear, and has been clear for many years, that the hospital needs increased capacity and it needs it now. Realistically, a judicial review of the planning board’s decision was never going to get political or clinical backing given the several year delay to projects such processes cause.
And so there needed to be a more immediate solution. This was the focus of an intense and heated meeting of the Oireachtas health committee last week, in which Department of Health officials were grilled about the co-location plans that were first touted more than 10 years ago.
[ Plans to move Rotunda maternity hospital to Connolly in Blanchardstown abandonedOpens in new window ]
Officials maintained co-location was still the policy but the movement of the Rotunda was “some distance away”, despite the fact there has been no further conversations on the issue since 2015.
Labour health spokeswoman Marie Sherlock described the scenario as a mess of the Government’s own making, while Sinn Féin’s David Cullinane described it as a “pie in the sky”.
Sherlock raised the very pertinent question of what the medium-term plan for the hospital would be, given, in their refusal, An Coimisiún Pleanála made two references to the Government’s co-location policy.
The planning authority decided the proposal did not represent an overwhelming public benefit to “justify the degree of heritage harm” given “Government Policy is to co-locate the Rotunda Hospital in the medium to longer term with Connolly hospital in Blanchardstown”.
It is an easy political win to abandon the co-location plan for the Rotunda hospital with cross-party backing for it remaining in situ, as well as backing from the hospital board itself.
And the arguments in favour of its current location are persuasive, particularly given the level of deprivation of the population in which it serves and its proximity to the Mater.
So what is going to happen now? According to Carroll MacNeill, a new planning application will be completed by the summer and it will be fast-tracked through the planning process courtesy of the forthcoming enactment of the Critical Infrastructure Bill.
This will address some of the patient safety concerns which underpinned the co-location policy, but it doesn’t resolve all of them.
Colm Henry, chief clinical officer at the Health Service Executive, said last week that the current building is not fit for purpose. The building is old and the wards do not afford patients adequate privacy and dignity.
So what will be important to see now is how, outside of the critical care unit, the hospital will be modernised to ensure these safety considerations are mitigated and excellent care can continue to be provided to the mothers and babies that need it.
