Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The purpose here is to build a maternity hospital, not any other hospital. The purpose of this exercise was never to buy out St. Vincent's. That was not the objective when Holles Street and St. Vincent's originally decided to co-locate. Let us not mix up the agenda. The agenda was to build a modern national maternity hospital with co-location of expertise in terms of maternal and neonatal care and in respect of a tertiary hospital.

In respect of the ownership, the protections in the constitution of the new hospital and other documents are designed precisely to deal with the issue the Deputy has referenced and prevents SVHG exercising the control which a parent could normally exercise over a subsidiary. St. Vincent's Healthcare Group is specifically obliged to promote the principal objective of the provision of clinically appropriate and legally permissible services and the interests of the national maternity hospital, including the independent exercise by the national maternity hospital and the board of the reserved powers. The reserved powers are in the constitution of the new hospital. The Minister can direct the directors to make sure the reserved powers are implemented, namely, all legal services being made available.

A range of people have been involved in this for quite a number of years in getting to this point, beyond the Mulvey agreement and so forth. To be fair to all concerned, the agenda is, as has been stated by many involved, to provide the best of modern care to women, in terms of maternity care, and newborn babies, in particular premature babies, well into the future. That is the only agenda here.

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