“Further delay would not be the right choice,” Minister Eamon Ryan has said in response to questions on the proposed new maternity hospital.
— Mícheál Lehane (@MichealLehane) May 5, 2022
This morning.
Dail Eireann.
Meanwhile…
In 2017, Eamon Ryan said the new maternity hospital:
“Should not involve the creation of a lease arrangement but the transfer of ownership of the site to the State so there is no uncertainty or lack of clarity on the ownership.”
Has he now changed his mind?@RoisinShortall pic.twitter.com/dwGHXEcXCh
— Social Democrats (@SocDems) May 5, 2022
Um.
Earlier…
The Sisters of Charity are the shareholders of the St Vincent’s Healthcare Group which the Department of Health said will be the “sole owner of the new hospital” which is planned to be built at the St Vincent’s Hospital site at Elm Park, Dublin 4
This morning.
Via Irish Times:
The Government will not consider any changes to the structure or governance of the new National Maternity Hospital in the coming weeks, despite Opposition concerns about the ownership of the site and potential religious influence.
Government will not reopen National Maternity Hospital deal (Irish Times)
Meanwhile…
…via solicitor Simon McGarr in The Gist (full article at link below)
The first thing to say is that the papers released [on Tuesday night] represent only part of the documents constituting this deal. They are missing the documents which govern and control the company which the nuns have set up and transferred their shareholding to.
Under canon law, this transfer required the approval of the Vatican and is subject to whatever conditions were set by the Vatican to proceed. The Minister does not appear to know what those rules are, telling the Irish Times
“I guess you’d have to talk to the Vatican about that. We don’t have any such documents.”
In fact, the state has been kept so in the dark on the matter that Mason, Hayes and Curran, the solicitors working for Holles Street Hospital, have a footnote at page 3 of the Co-Ordination Agreement meekly asking “MHC Note: Can you clarify whether any third party consents/approvals or additional steps are required in advance of the ability of SVHG to grant the Lease.” This seems like something of a loose end to leave unresolved when you’re bringing a supposedly oven-ready deal to cabinet.
The papers released also lack basic elements on their own account- the Operating Licence is missing the Facility Operations Agreement, which is meant to be attached as a Schedule and the Lease is missing the maps and Annexes which would show the parts of the St Vincent’s campus the current hospital management would control and which parts would actually be under the control of the new hospital’s management. Those maps are also missing from the various option agreements.
This last point is particularly interesting in the light of the eye-opening clause of the Lease which commits that a portion of the land and/or the building being leased is still going to be left in control of the nuns’ new vehicle…(more at link below)
The Gist: The Maternity Hospital’s Difficult Birth (Simon McGarr, The Gist)
