Maternity hospital conditions ‘not acceptable in 21st century’

New Minister for Health Simon Harris has committed to facilitating talks between management from St Vincent's Hospital and the National Maternity Hospital to bring an end to the dispute over governance of the maternity facility.

Speaking on his way into the first meeting of the new Cabinet on Wednesday morning, Mr Harris highlighted the urgent need to improve the conditions of the National Maternity Hospital for expectant mothers.

During a private visit to the hospital on Tuesday night, the minister said he witnessed at first hand the conditions in which mothers are expected to deliver their newborn babies.

"While I was struck by the excellence of the staff, the expertise of the staff, I was quite taken aback by the conditions of the building - the conditions in which staff are having to work and most importantly the conditions in which mothers are expected to deliver their babies," said Mr Harris. "It's really not acceptable in 21st century Ireland that expectant mothers and their children have to put up with these conditions and indeed the frontline staff.

“They’ve been promised a new building since the 1990s. There is now funding in the capital plan to go ahead and build this building. There are plans in place that are ready to be lodged in terms of trying to obtain planning permission. It is absolutely essential that we get this going.”

The National Maternity Hospital is currently struggling to maintain a service in Holles Street, while St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin 4 is seeing an increase in waiting lists and dangerous levels of emergency overcrowding.

It is proposed a new facility be built at St Vincent’s. However St Vincent’s is adamant that it must take over the governance of the facility, which has been rejected by the board of the National Maternity Hospital.

Asked about his long term plans for the HSE, Mr Harris said the new Government had “a unique opportunity” to ask opposition and Government TDs to “come together, listen to experts, listen to stakeholders, listen to patients, listen to staff on the frontline who are the experts, to try and identify where possible a consensus.”

Mr Harris has welcomed a motion from Opposition TDs calling for the establishment of a cross-party committee to develop a 10 year plan for the health service. Mr Harris reiterated on Wednesday that he was positively considering the motion.

Asked whether cabinet ministers should pay their water charges, Mr Harris said it was “the law of the land” and that everyone should pay their bills.