After nine years, the controversy over the planned move of the National Maternity Hospital to the St Vincent's University Hospital campus has reached the endgame.
With details of the legal agreement for the transfer now published and agreed by the two hospitals and the HSE, the Government has a decision to make over the next week – either give the project the go-ahead or walk away from it.
No-one doubts the need to provide modern facilities for Irish women giving birth. Yet the plan to move the NMH to St Vincent’s, founded in 1834 by the Religious Sisters of Charity, was troubled from the start.
An initial turf war over control of the new institution, between the NMH and the adult hospital at St Vincent’s, was settled in 2016. Far greater difficulties then arose when concerns were raised over possible Catholic influence on the maternity hospital after it moved to a religious-owned campus.
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Given the history of church interference in health, these concerns were understandable. They needed to be allayed.
One way of addressing them would be for the State to buy the site and own the newly-built hospital. This approach, however, would never deliver a new hospital in the near future. St Vincent’s, though State-funded, is a voluntary body with its own board and a right to run its own affairs.
It would never agree to the sale of a plot of land in the centre of its campus. Any attempt to use a compulsory purchase order would sour relations and run into legal difficulties.
Though it has taken six years, considerable efforts have been made by all parties to allay the concerns expressed. The Sisters of Charity have relinquished ownership at St Vincent’s. The State lease for the new hospital has been extended to 299 years, a lot longer than the expected 50-year lifespan of the facility.
Legal documents are explicit that every procedure provided in the State will be available to women. Greater weight has been given to State and NMH appointees on the board of the new hospital.
Among objectors, concerns remain over the level of secrecy involved and the use of offshore entities in the new structures at St Vincent's. Doctors at the NMH, meanwhile, are pleading for the new hospital to be built. In the wider economy, inflation is growing and, as the secretary general of the Department of Finance said this week, "the era of free money" to borrow on international markets is coming to an end.
It the project does not proceed now, there is no prospect of it happening at St Vincent’s for a generation. What money is available would then be better spent progressing new builds for the other Dublin maternity hospitals. Given all the circumstances, the Government should give the green light to the new hospital and ensure it is built as expeditiously and as economically as possible.