Rotunda brand 'must be preserved' during move

The new master of the Rotunda hospital has set down conditions for its planned move to a greenfield site at Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown.

Prof Fergal Malone said the name and brand of the Rotunda, the oldest maternity hospital in the world, must be preserved in any relocation away from Dublin city centre. The structures of the voluntary hospital, which has its own board, would also have to be retained.

Minister for Health Leo Varadkar and Tánaiste Joan Burton announced last June that the Rotunda will move to the Connolly site, in the heart of their Dublin West constituency, in the coming years.

Prof Malone, who has just taken up the post of master for a seven-year term, said it would be “silly” to lose the Rotunda brand, which is of “huge national and international importance”. In addition, Connolly would have to be upgraded before the Rotunda moves there, he said.

The Rotunda is currently linked to the nearby adult hospital at the Mater, which has a greater number of medical specialities than are available at present in Blanchardstown.

Upgrading

The Rotunda board has made it clear that the upgrading of Connolly is an “absolute prerequisite” for any move.

“To be clear, if there is no improvement on services at Connolly to the level that’s required we won’t move,” it has said.

The new master described the Rotunda’s current premises as no longer fit for purpose and said overseeing the move to a new site will be the biggest challenge of his term in office.

He hoped the move would be completed within his seven-year term. He would also like to see a children’s hospital built at Connolly but said he was happy with the current proposal to locate a paediatric ambulatory centre there.

Asked what would happen to its historic buildings after the Rotunda moved, he said no decision had been made yet.

“The Rotunda is a charity so there would be an obligation on the board to use the proceeds for the original mission of the hospital, the betterment of care for women and children.”

Gynaecology services

He said he hoped to prioritise gynaecology services, where even benign issues can evolve into cancers if not treated promptly. Currently, there are more than 1,500 women on the Rotunda’s gynaecology waiting list, some for up to 15 months.

Speaking of burnout and stress in his own profession, Prof Malone criticised the “growing expectation of perfection” in medicine for putting obstetricians under excessive pressure.

“While we have made huge advances, medicine remains an imperfect science. Things happen in obstetrics that are just unexplainable.”

Prof Malone trained in the US before returning to the Rotunda a decade ago, where he has pioneered groundbreaking surgical techniques. More than 120 children have been saved in this time by operating on them in the womb for twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome.