IRELAND
Irish Independent
April 30 2017
According to a story told by Dr Peter Boylan, he and Dr Rhona Mahony were not always so divided on the future of the National Maternity Hospital. Dr Boylan, a former master of the hospital, and Dr Mahony, the current Master who also happens to be his sister-in-law, had offices beside each other in the crumbling Holles Street building.
The plan to move the hospital to a new state-of-the-art building co-located on the grounds of St Vincent’s Healthcare Group’s Elm Park campus had started and stalled. St Vincent’s, which is owned by the Religious Sisters of Charity, wanted ownership and ultimate control of the maternity hospital.
St Vincent’s was playing “hardball”, insisting the National Maternity Hospital submitted to ownership and control. “We had a lot of discussions about negotiating with St Vincent’s who were playing very hardball. Minister [Leo] Varadkar was very supportive of the National Maternity Hospital position,” said Dr Boylan. “But then after Simon Harris was appointed [last year], that all seemed to change. Minister Harris, on his first weekend, said: ‘I will deliver this hospital.’ That was all fine. He appointed Kieran Mulvey [a professional mediator].”
Dr Boylan claims that in May last year, Dr Mahony asked him to write to the Minister for Health and to the board of St Vincent’s Healthcare Group “expressing concerns about the nuns’ potential involvement” in the National Maternity Hospital. He says he was asked to write because he was chairman of the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
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