Results 30,301-30,320 of 49,836 for speaker:Stephen Donnelly
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: -----obstetricians involved campaigned publicly for the repeal of the eighth amendment of the Constitution.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: My understanding is that obviously this is something that would normally be within the maternity hospital and maternity units. It is not something that is precluded.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: My understanding is that the negotiations between the stakeholders were complex, that there were multiple legal firms involved in looking at a way to flesh out the Mulvey agreement and that it was not an easy process. Significant process has been made this year. I wanted to see significant progress last year but we were, obviously, very focused on Covid and many other issues. This year,...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: Deputy Shortall keeps making these statements-----
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: I do not have those numbers. There is a requirement under the Act that the Minister is provided with the total numbers but I do not have-----
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: The Deputy will have to ask St. Vincent's University Hospital about that. I commit to engaging with the Department and directly with St. Vincent's to get as much detail as possible for the committee.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: There is no final deal in place so the detail-----
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: I will get the Deputy a detailed note on that but the lease will commence either from the beginning of the works or, potentially, from the commissioning stage.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: By "the asset", is the Deputy talking about the building?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: The estimate is that the life cycle of a building like this would be 40 years to 50 years. I cannot remember exactly how old Holles Street is but it is less than 149 years. Certainly, the economic value of something built today would be pretty small in 150 years.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: I apologise to the Deputy. I ask her to help me understand the question. Is she asking if we are planning now for what we will do in 150 years' time-----
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: No, not at all. We could discuss this for some time but the advice to the Department is that modern hospitals can sometimes have a lifespan of 40 years to 50 years, at which point you will want to replace them.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: First, the lease would be for 150 years. If you want to take off the years for building, then let us say 145 years. At the end of 145 years, we would still own the building. The agreement is we would own the building. There are so many variables at play for what options might be chosen to exercise or agree, say a decade ahead of time, or in 130 years' time, that I do not know if you could...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: The Deputy may be right but, for example, let us say in 140 years' time we have a much better location for a maternity hospital, or multiple better locations for maternity hospitals, or healthcare has advanced to the point where there is a blended model of acute care provided in very different ways and we might no longer want this or that hospital. I am saying it is very difficult, in...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: We do not know that yet because no agreement has been reached. If we were to lease the land for 150 years, in about 140 years or perhaps a bit earlier or whatever it might be, we would look at options. What those options would be would depend on our healthcare requirements at that time which would be very difficult to predict. If you were to go back 140 years to whenever that is, it would...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: Okay-----
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: I thank the Deputy very much for the questions. On the issue of termination, the situation is, as we will all appreciate, that terminations, by and large, will happen in the maternity units themselves. I take the Deputy’s point and that she was raising it by way of background, that there is a very uneven spread of terminations throughout the country. This is one of the things we...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: I again thank the Deputy very much. I agree with a great deal of what she has just said. Let me be very clear: no one is dismissing the concerns being raised around clinical and operational independence. I, the Deputy and all of the members of the joint committee understand that and we are taking it very seriously. On the second point raised by the Deputy around a Catholic or religious...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: The Religious Sisters of Charity are transferring to St. Vincent's Healthcare Group.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: New National Maternity Hospital: Discussion (14 Jul 2021)
Stephen Donnelly: That is the position they have taken. It is the position they took a long time ago. It is the framework agreed under the Mulvey agreement and all the subsequent work that has been done. It is not for me to speculate as to why transfers are made. What I can say is they stepped back from St. Vincent's Healthcare Group, I think in 2017. They are fully transferring all ownership to the...