The Rotunda Hospital must provide the HSE with an audit of all the private work being carried out by consultants at the hospital who are on public-only contracts by today.
The deadline was set by Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill.
The Minister for Public Expenditure says if the Rotunda doesn’t comply with government policy then there will be an escalation under the services level agreement.
Jack Chambers said he fully supports Ms Carroll McNeill’s work to drive reform and compliance around the public-only consultant contract.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Today with David McCullagh, Mr Chambers said that the Rotunda cannot have an “a la carte” approach when it comes to contracts or seeking to circumvent what they know if clearly a public only contract.
“This has been signed up by consultants in the Rotunda and many other hospitals to deliver better public health care, deliver better more inclusive, accessible maternity care for women and babies, and the Rotunda can’t have an a la carte approach when it comes to contracts that have been signed by doctors in their hospital,” he said.
“Also, they should not be seeking to circumvent what they know is very clearly a public only contract, and that’s why we expect compliance, and we expect implementation of the public only consultant contract.”
Jack Chambers said he supports the Minister for Health’s work on reform and compliance
Mr Chambers said he doesn’t accept a wider point that there is a clause in the contract that would allow some consultants continue to carry out private work.
This is an attempt by the Board and management of the Rotunda what is a very clear direction of public health policy and a clear direction of the service level agreement, he said.
He said both he and the Minister for Health are clear that the only way there will be improved outputs in the health system is through a focus on reform and productivity.
“Service level agreement is in return for public funding. There’s compliance around the set of direction, the principles upon under which maternity care and health care is delivered within the hospital,” he said.
“There was very a very clear transition arrangement from 2023 to the end of 2025 which gave hospitals the space to reposition their wider work stream to deliver the public only consultant contract.
“We’ve had strong uptake of that by doctors, and we can’t have cherry picking of public contracts. This is a critical part of Sláintecare, delivering a universal health system.”
Minister Chambers said the government is providing unprecedented resourcing for a public health system to ensure there is optimum quality care of a high standard in public maternity hospitals.
The row erupted following a hearing last week at the Oireachtas Health Committee, when the Master of the Rotunda Professor Sean Daly said the practice was continuing, despite a direction that it should stop.
In March 2023, the “public-only consultant contract” was introduced across the health service as part of the Sláintecare initiative
70% of consultants signed up to the contracts, which meant no private work was to be allowed in public hospitals.
Consultants who switched from the old contract to the new public-only one were given until the end of last year to make that transition.
Jennifer Carroll MacNeill suggested that women who had paid for the service should be recompensed
There are no private maternity hospitals in Ireland so any obstetric private care is provided in public hospitals.
There are 32 consultants providing maternity care in the Rotunda. Fourteen of them are on the public-only contract.
Speaking on Friday, Ms Carroll MacNeill said she wanted confirmation from the Rotunda that this practice had ended.
She also suggested that women who had paid for the service should be recompensed.
She warned the Rotunda Hospital that it did not have permission to allow consultants on public-only contracts to continue doing private work in the hospital.
Confidence in Master of Rotunda ‘unseemly’ – Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin has said it has confidence in the Master of the Rotunda Hospital and that the ongoing row between the Minister for Health and hospital management is “unseemly”.
Sinn Féin’s health spokesperson David Cullinane called for both sides to meet to fully resolve the dispute.
“There’s a lot for this hospital and the Master of the hospital and the management of the hospital to discuss with this minister,” he said yesterday.
“Any row or standoff in my view on contracts is unseemly it’s in nobody’s interest. It’s not in the interest of the hospital and it’s certainly not in the interests of women whether they are public or private patients availing of services in any hospital.”
He said the standard of care in the Rotunda was “absolutely outstanding” and he said his party supported public-only contracts as well as public care and public hospitals.
Mr Cullinane said he supported some flexibility in the contracts, while they were being negotiated, but the core of the contract was that “these are well paid consultants and well-paid contracts to do public work”.
He said they must be held to that.
Social Democrats health spokesperson Pádraig Rice said that he thinks that Ms Carroll MacNeill “has taken quite a strong line on this”.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, he said: “I do welcome the development from the minister and the line she has taken on this and this is a crucially important reform. We can’t allow these to be unpicked. They’re really important reforms.”
“It’s not a role for the state to provide private health care. That’s a role for the private market. We need to focus on providing the best quality public care.
“Most of the European countries have universal, single-tier healthcare systems that provide high-quality care to the people in their countries. We need to do the same here,” Mr Rice added.
Labour’s health spokesperson Marie Sherlock called for the standoff between the Rotunda and the Department of Health to end.
Speaking on RTÉ’s with David McCullagh, she said: “If we are serious about public hospital facilities being used for publicly provided care, then it is on Government, it’s on the HSE.
“And I see that the HSE and Government have an issue now to try and the difficulty to try and resolve this.”
“Different women will want different things, and we have to acknowledge and respect that, but when we have a publicly funded health care system, we have to make sure that there’s a range of choice within the public system,” she added.