The Rotunda Hospital has been given a deadline to stop public-only consultants from carrying out private work, as the Irish Health Minister insists contracts cannot be cherry-picked. The Public-Only Consultant Contract, introduced in 2023, aims to phase out private maternity care in public hospitals by 2025, with non-compliance risking defunding. Opposition parties call for resolution while supporting the public-only model.
Rotunda Hospital given deadline of today to sort private care row as Minister says contracts cannot be 'cherry picked'with a list of public-only consultants that have been carrying out private work.
In 2023, the Public-Only Consultant Contract was introduced, requiring hospital consultants on these contracts to treat only public patients in public facilities. Since then, private or semi-private maternity care in public hospitals has been actively phased out with all private work to be suspended by the end of 2025.
Master of the Rotunda Hospital, Professor Sean Daly, confirmed this practice is still happening in hisThere are no private maternity hospitals in the country, so any obstetric private care is provided in public hospitals. If the Rotunda doesn’t agree to halt the practice of public-only consultants providing private care, the Health Minister has said the hospital will be defunded but women "will get the care they need".
’s Today with David McCullagh: "This has been signed up by consultants in the Rotunda and many other hospitals to deliver better public healthcare, deliver better, more inclusive, accessible maternity care for women and babies, and the Rotunda can't have an à la carte approach when it comes to contracts that have been signed by doctors in their hospital.
"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. " The Public Expenditure Minister said this shouldn’t be continuing as there was a "very clear transition" from 2023 to the end of 2025 for this to be phased out.
Opposition parties have said the ongoing row isn’t in the interest of pregnant women, with Sinn Féin’s health spokesperson David Cullinane calling for both sides to meet and fully resolve the issue. However, he said his party supports public-only contracts and that consultants are getting paid well "to do public work". TD Pádraig Rice has praised the Health Minister’s response, saying Jennifer Carroll MacNeill "has taken quite a strong line on this".
The party’s health spokesperson said: "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.
"’s health spokesperson Marie Sherlock has also called for the dispute to end, but said the choice of women needs to be respected.
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