Taoiseach criticised over uncertainty around Rotunda Hospital’s future

A failure to clarify long-term plans for the Rotunda Hospital contributed to planning permission for a new critical care wing being overturned, opposition parties have claimed.

Dublin City Council granted permission for a 100 million euro four-storey extension to the maternity hospital in July.

However, on Friday that was overturned by Ireland’s planning body An Coimisiun Pleanala, following objections about preserving the architectural heritage of the area.

During Leaders Questions on Tuesday afternoon, both Ivana Bacik and Holly Cairns asked the Taoiseach if a 2016 proposal to move the Rotunda from the city centre to Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown in west Dublin has been scrapped.

That plan has not proceeded, and both women raised the clinical links the Rotunda Hospital has established with the nearby Mater Hospital.

Ms Bacik told Micheal Martin: “It was entirely foreseeable that unless government had clearly ruled out relocation plans, such plans could be used as a stick to beat maternity care within the planning process.”

While Ms Cairns said “the absurdity” of the decision “makes at least some sense when you realise that An Coimisiun Pleanala partially based this decision on government policy to co-locate the Rotunda to Connolly Hospital”.

Both pressed Mr Martin to confirm plans to move the Rotunda from the city centre have been scrapped.

He responded saying: “I don’t want, on the whim, to invent new national maternity strategies.

He added that Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill is meeting with the Master of the Rotunda and will come back to government “fairly quickly” with a statement about the future of the project.

He said the co-location, where a specialist unit is placed on the campus of a larger hospital, was “in essence” there between the Rotunda and Mater hospitals.

And he highlighted a “blue light corridor” that facilitates urgent transfers between the hospitals.

He said: “In my view we’re going to have to look at all options here, in terms of getting this critical care wing built at the Rotunda, because there is no other immediate prospect, or short to medium term prospect of anything else happening other than the critical wing being established on this site.”

Speaking at the Department of Health on Tuesday afternoon, Ms Carroll MacNeill said whether the decision should be judicially reviewed was a matter for the Rotunda, but said such legal challenges added time to planning processes.

She said she was due to meet the Master of the Rotunda next week to discuss options for the Rotunda.

She added: “This morning, I met with the clinical leadership team for the region, so that’s the regional executive officer and the regional clinical director who are responsible for the Rotunda, the Mater, Connolly, all of the hospitals together to look at what how we’re going to meet the immediate needs of children and women, babies and women in the Rotunda site as soon as possible.

“So I have a substantial body to work to do on that over the next number of weeks.”

She said she needed to reflect on the previous plan to co-locate the maternity hospital at Connolly Hospital, but said it was not the primary reason for the planning permission being overturned.

“Obviously I have read all of the judgments and decisions very carefully and the maternity strategy, when you read the decision of the commissioners, it is not the primary piece,” she said.

“It is very much a heritage-based decision which also references the maternity strategy. And that is in contrast to the decisions made by Dublin City Council and the inspector’s report, which would have made public interest decisions in the opposite way, on similar grounds.”