Latest news with #NationalMaternityHospital
Irish Times
15-05-2025
- Health
- Irish Times
National Maternity Hospital ‘coerced' into signing HSE agreement
The National Maternity Hospital (NMH) in Holles Street has said it was 'coerced' by the HSE into signing a service agreement despite having reservations due to 'critical funding' being withheld until it agreed to do so. The hospital in official correspondence also appeared to be concerned that the HSE service agreement provisions could extend into services funded privately by fee-paying patients. It said the agreement 'fails to cater for what should be fundamentally different arrangements as between the publicly-funded and privately-funded operations within NMH'. It said in 2016 the HSE had specifically recognised in writing that it had a right 'to engage in private funded services and these being outside the remit of the service agreement'. The hospital subsequently told The Irish Times this week that for several years it has had 'concerns about the requirements in the service level agreement which could potentially interfere with the NMH executives' fiduciary responsibilities to the hospital'. It said this included the HSE 'introducing the reservation of the right to take over the hospital and put in a new management team'. READ MORE The hospital said the service level agreement only covered publicly-funded activity. 'It is a contract for publicly-funded services,' it said. The HSE enters into such agreements with all voluntary hospitals and agencies to which it provides funding. These essentially set out the services to be provided in return for money allocated by the State. However, in correspondence to senior management in the HSE hospital group in which it is located, the NMH said it believed that certain provisions in the service agreement were 'totally unsuited' to its long-existing structure. The NMH in Holles Street is funded largely by the State. In 2023 it received €92.7 million from the HSE. However over 10 per cent of its income – about €12 million – was generated from private sources. The hospital this week released details of correspondence to the then Ireland East Hospital Group (since replaced by the HSE Dublin and South East region) last July about the current service agreement. Senior hospital management in the letter sent last July said it continued to have reservations about the circumstances under which it had signed up to such service agreements. The hospital said it was 'coerced into signing the service agreement after the HSE unilaterally withheld critical funding until we agreed to sign'. The hospital said in a statement that in its letter last July it had reiterated concerns raised in correspondence each year going back to 2016 'when the NMH signed the agreement following the withholding of 20 per cent of the hospital's funding'. The NMH also said in the July letter that it was concerned about the introduction of a new 'integrated financial management system'. It said it would engage with a HSE team implementing a national integrated staff records and pay programme across the health system. But it reserved the right to maintain its own HR management systems. The hospital said that the provision of services under the service agreement was 'totally dependent upon the HSE and the hospital group allocating sufficient funds to it to provide for the appropriate resourcing of these services'. It said it required that any deficits in the pension schemes were 'a liability of the HSE and should be funded and similarly any income shortfalls against HSE-set targets require funding'. The HSE Dublin and southeast health region said in a statement that it 'values the inpatient and day support services provided in the NMH, which the HSE supports through funding under the Section 38 of the Health Acts'.
Irish Times
14-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
New Oireachtas Committee on Infrastructure is an absurd culmination of a dysfunctional system
The chronic inability of the State to get big projects done was on display in Monday's edition of The Irish Times. On page one we read how a decades-long failure to invest in water and wastewater infrastructure in the Dublin region has now put the ambitious plan to build 6,000 homes in the former Dublin Industrial Estate in Glasnevin under threat. Uisce Éireann (otherwise known as Irish Water) had to remind Dublin City Council of this unfortunate point after the local authority published its draft Ballyboggan master plan, which covered the 77-acre site. Sitting beside it on the front page was a story about how the costs of the yet-to-be-built National Maternity Hospital , Dublin, has increased tenfold to €2 billion during the 10 years since the project was announced. READ MORE Much of the intervening decade was consumed by an increasingly-redundant row about the extent to which octogenarian nuns will impose the will of the Catholic church on a bunch of money-mad hospital consultants. Senior health service figures are credited with having to break the bad news to Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill . Turn to page three and there is a piece about how the first tower block on the site of the former Irish Glass Bottle factory site in Ringsend, Dublin, may not contain any affordable housing. Planning permission for the development – which provides for up to 3,800 houses – is contingent on 15 per cent of the apartments being affordable housing. It appears, however, that nobody nailed down the when, where and how much of this. The council is now in negotiations with two multibillion-dollar US property funds – Lioncor and Oaktree – which are fronted by the precociously litigious Johnny Ronan . Hard to see that ending well. This particular bit of bad news seems to have been brought to the Government's attention by the Sinn Féin housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin . A few pages further on we read that the Government's plans for four large offshore wind farms that are the keystone of its strategy to hit net zero are in disarray. The promoters of one farm – on the Sceirde Rocks off Connemara – have already pulled it amid planning delays. The proximate reason is that the weather in Connemara turned out to be worse than they thought. The other three projects are now in doubt following the cancellation of similar project off the coast of Yorkshire, northern England, because of rising costs and the risk of delays. The read-across for the Irish projects – which have locked in the price they will get for the energy they will generate at a lower cost than the British project – is not very encouraging. Given that none of them has got through planning and all are opposed by fringe interests who would happily take their campaigns the whole way to the United Nations if they were let, it must be tempting to just cut and run. Finally, a few columns over on the same page was a report that the Dublin Metrolink railway project to connect Dublin Airport to the city centre is likely to cost a fifth more than its budget of €9.5 billion and is unlikely to be completed by 2035. This particular wake-up-call was delivered by Seán Sweeney, the New Zealander brought in to run the project. It's hard to know exactly what all this proves. There is no shortage of culprits for this sorry state of affairs of which planning is the favourite. As Sweeney succinctly put it: 'The situation in Ireland where pretty well anyone can object to anything and stop it for six months or nine months is not good for Ireland.' The planning system is, however, only an outworking of a political system that seems to overly promote the concerns of individuals over the common good. Clientelist politics supercharged by an electoral system that fosters intraparty competition for Dáil seats gets the blame for this. The effect is without a doubt corrosive. A new Oireachtas Committee on Infrastructure has been established, which in theory is meant to address the problem of why we are so bad at delivering large projects. It is unlikely to add much to the sum of human knowledge, but it will provide a valuable platform for TDs and senators who need to make headlines out of problems rather than solve them if they want to get re-elected. Expect to hear a lot of special pleading on behalf of constituents alongside the scolding of executives. In many ways, the committee is the absurd culmination of this dysfunctional system. It actually needs failure if it is to function effectively for its members. There is little mileage in committee hearings where Uisce Éireann executives come in to tell TDs and Senators about the excellent progress being made on upgrading the sewers in north Dublin because the Oireachtas had passed the necessary reforms and had cleared the way for the funding to be provided.
Irish Times
12-05-2025
- Health
- Irish Times
Bill for new National Maternity Hospital could reach €2 billion
The new National Maternity Hospital could ultimately cost close to €2 billion to develop, senior health service figures believe. If the estimate is borne out, it would mean the bill for the maternity facility, to be constructed on the St Vincent's hospital campus at Elm Park, Dublin, would be more than 10 times the amount originally allocated when the project was announced more than a decade ago. Tenders for the building of the hospital are being examined by an evaluation group in the HSE and are expected to be given to a project board shortly. Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll McNeill will then have to bring a final business case to Cabinet later this year if the project is to receive final approval. READ MORE Senior health service figures maintain construction costs for the hospital are likely to be about €1.5 billion, or higher, and that other bills associated with developing and commissioning the facility could push the final price to some €2 billion. 'The tenders are higher than expected,' a senior individual with direct involvement in the project said. It is understood there are contingency elements included in some tenders to minimise the likelihood of a repeat of the experience with the national children's hospital. That project, which will also cost in excess of €2 billion, has experienced significant overruns and is running way behind schedule. Some sources maintained that the development of the facility on an existing hospital campus rather than a greenfield site increased costs. A rise in construction inflation, allied with uncertainty over trading conditions because of the potential impact of US tariffs, are also said to have contributed. The Irish Times also understands that the HSE will face monetary charges if any undue delay on its part in making decisions leads to additional costs or delays. In May 2013, the then minister for health, James Reilly, announced the government had agreed to commission a new facility to replace the National Maternity Hospital's ageing premises at Holles Street. Dr Reilly said an 'indicative sum' of €150 million had been approved for the project. At the time it was forecast that construction would commence in late 2016 and be completed in 2018. The project was beset by a row over governance, ethos and whether there could be restrictions on the types of services provided to women being treated there. Campaigners, including some prominent medical figures, argued it would have a Catholic ethos because of the legacy of religious control of St Vincent's, which was founded by an order of Catholic nuns. They contended that this could prevent certain treatments – legal in Ireland but not permitted under church rules – from being made available. But the government, other staff at Holles Street and authorities at St Vincent's rejected these suggestions. Ultimately a 299-year lease was secured on the site to ensure its operational and clinical independence. Over the years cost estimates for the project increased significantly. In February 2017, the HSE projected it would cost €296 million. In June 2021, the Department of Health said cost estimates had risen further to about €800 million, including €300 million for commissioning and transferring services from Holles Street.
