Taoiseach criticised over uncertainty around Rotunda Hospital’s future

By Bairbre Holmes, Press Association

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 four-storey extension to the maternity hospital in July.

However, on Friday that was overturned by An Coimisiún Pleanála 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.

Bacik told Micheál 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 Cairns said “the absurdity” of the decision “makes at least some sense when you realise that An Coimisiún Pleanála partially based this decision on government policy to co-locate the Rotunda to Connolly Hospital”.

Both pressed 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.”