Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Government is committed to the national maternity hospital relocation project. We want to see it go to tender, if not this year certainly next year and we want to see it go to construction next year. It involves the development of a new maternity hospital on the campus of St. Vincent's at Elm Park and also improvements to that hospital. The new hospital will be funded by the State and is included in Project Ireland 2040. The hospital will have full operational and clinical independence. We intend that it should apply the medical ethics of our State and our Republic and not those of any religious order. The development will represent a flagship project of the national maternity strategy and will constitute the largest single investment ever made in maternity services in Ireland. However, it is essential that the legal and governance arrangements associated with this very significant State investment are robust. Considerable work is under way and has been undertaken to develop a legal framework for this project to protect the public's significant investment in the new hospital. This legal framework will also underpin the operational and clinical independence of the new hospital from St. Vincent's. Once finalised - and it has not been finalised yet - the proposals will be subject to consideration by the Government, the national maternity hospital itself and St. Vincent's Healthcare Group. I assure the House that patient care in the new hospital will be delivered without religious, ethnic or other distinction and that any medical procedure which is in accordance with the laws of the land will be carried out there.

It should also be said that the model of stand-alone maternity hospitals is not the norm internationally. Government policy is to co-locate all remaining maternity hospitals with adult acute services to provide the best clinical outcomes. This has already been done in Cork, for example, so we want to have it done in Limerick as well with the relocation of St. Munchin's to the University Hospital Limerick site at Dooradoyle, the Rotunda to Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown and the Coombe to St. James's Hospital where it will be trilocated with the national children's hospital that is now under construction.

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