24% of mothers in Holles Street went 'private'

Birth figures: Nearly 50 per cent of women who gave birth at the National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street, Dublin, last year were either private or semi-private patients, according to new figures released by the Health Service Executive.

The figures, released in reply to a parliamentary question by Green Party deputy John Gormley, show that 24 per cent of women who gave birth to one or more babies at the hospital last year were private patients.

A further 25 per cent of women who delivered at the hospital were semi-private patients, according to the figures. Fifty-one per cent of patients who gave birth at the hospital were public patients. The figures show that the number of private or semi-private patients giving birth at the hospital has remained steady at approximately 50 per cent for the last number of years.

The HSE also revealed that around 44 per cent of women who gave birth at the Coombe Women's Hospital in Dublin were either private or semi -private patients.

According to the HSE, 2,119 women, designated as private patients, delivered babies at the Coombe in 2005, slightly higher than the figures for the previous year. A total of 1,320 women, classified as semi-private patients, gave birth at the hospital last year. The HSE figures show that 4,352 women, categorised as public patients, delivered babies at the Coombe last year.

The HSE also revealed that around 35 per cent of women who gave birth at the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin were either private or semi-private patients.

A total of 6,695 women delivered babies at the Rotunda Hospital last year, of whom 1,289 were categorised as private patients. A further 1,033 women were categorised as semi-private patients.

The publication of details of the number of private and semi-private patients delivering babies in the main Dublin public maternity hospitals comes at the time when the private sector is planning to increase obstetric capacity for fee-paying patients.

Private medical care company Harlequin Healthcare, which bought Mount Carmel Hospital in south Dublin several weeks ago for a sum said to be more than €50 million, has said that it would expand its existing maternity as well as other services.

Harlequin, which already owns private hospitals in Sligo and Kilkenny, plans to invest around €30 million to redevelop its new 150-bed facility in Dublin.

It also emerged last week that another private healthcare operator, the Beacon Medical Group, planned to develop a new maternity, women's and children's hospital in Sandyford in Dublin.

Beacon had been in the market for Mount Carmel, but lost out to Harlequin. The Beacon group had also expressed an interest in the development of the new €500 national children's hospital, but an expert group recommended that the facility should go to the Mater Hospital.

Senior Department of Health sources told The Irish Times that the official guidelines of 80 per cent public and 20 per cent private work in public hospitals was an average across the system.

Sources said that traditionally the number of beds designated private in public maternity hospitals was higher than in the acute sector overall on average. Department of Health sources said that the maternity hospitals were not breaking any rules in having a private or semi-private rate of nearly 50 per cent in some cases.