Legal framework on new National Maternity Hospital expected within weeks

Discussions are to be concluded and drafting of the legal documents finalised in coming weeks on a legal framework to protect the State’s investment in the new National Maternity Hospital and to ensure that the hospital remains in State ownership.

The new maternity hospital building is to be relocated to the St. Vincent’s University Hospital campus at Elm Park, on a site leased from the St. Vincent’s Healthcare Group with a leasehold interest of 99 years and rights of renewal.

Once finalised, the legal framework is to be brought to Government for approval.

The development of the legal framework had proved to be more difficult and deliberations more protracted than originally anticipated, “but I understand there has been good ongoing engagement between the key stakeholders,” Minister of State at the Department of Health, Fianna Fáil’s Anne Rabbitte told the Seanad yesterday.

The corporate and clinical governance arrangements for the new maternity hospital at Elm Park are encompassed in the “Mulvey agreement”, which was finalised following mediation between the National Maternity Hospital and the St. Vincent’s Healthcare Group.

The Mulvey agreement provides for the establishment of a new company, the national maternity hospital at Elm Park DAC, which is to have clinical and operational as well as financial and budgetary independence in the provision of maternity, gynaecological and neonatal services.

“It ensures a full range of services will be available at the hospital without religious, ethnic or other distinction. It is important to emphasise that those overriding objectives will be copper-fastened through the legal framework,” Minister Rabbitte told Senators.

She acknowledged the buildings in Holles Street in Dublin were no longer fit for purpose.