Varadkar threat to pull funds in St Vincent’s hospital row

Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has warned St Vincent's Hospital it must resolve the row over the planned €150 million relocation of the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) to its site or the funding will be directed "elsewhere".

The hospitals are at odds over governance but, in what may be his last significant act as Minister, Mr Varadkar appealed to both to make a last attempt to settle their differences.

"If no such agreement can be reached within the next few weeks, I regret that we will be left with no option but to examine alternatives," he said in a strongly worded letter to St Vincent's chairman Jimmy Menton.

St Vincent’s says the board of the NMH at Holles Street should be subsumed into its own board in the interests of patient safety and efficient operation but the maternity hospital insists on retaining its own board, with an obstetrician or master as chief executive.

Planning application

The dispute has prevented the planning application for the project being lodged.

In the letter, Mr Varadkar expresses support for the NMH’s stance and pointed out that the recently published national maternity strategy proposes retaining the mastership system for the hospital.

The need to redevelop the NMH was urgent given the poor infrastructure at Holles Street, he said. St Vincent’s stood to gain significantly by having the NMH on its campus, with almost one-quarter of the project relating to developments in the adult hospital.

If the project does not proceed, the funding under the Government’s capital plan will be redirected “elsewhere” and this would have “serious consequences” for patients, he said.

Holles Street welcomed the intervention and said it was “keen to urgently resume conversation focused on overcoming the current differences to everyone’s satisfaction, so that this project can be realised.”

Impasse

Mr Menton welcomed the NMH’s stated commitment to seeking a resolution to the impasse but said it was difficult to reconcile this with comments made by NMH’s former clinical director, Dr

Peter Boylan

.

Dr Boylan has claimed St Vincent’s could prevent a relocated NMH from providing IVF, sterilisation and other services because of its Catholic ethos, unless his hospital retained control over maternity services.

Mr Menton said Dr Boylan “persisted in challenging the bona fides of our board, our medical director, and our shareholders [the Religious Sisters of Charity], when we state that all medical procedures currently undertaken at Holles Street can continue to be carried out in the relocated hospital at our Elm Park campus”.

He said it would help clarify matters greatly if Holles Street was to say whether Dr Boylan was reflecting the opinion of its board.

A spokesman for Holles Street said Dr Boylan did not speak for the hospital and was not involved in discussions on the relocation project.