Overview
- On Friday the Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, told the Rotunda Hospital to rescind a hospital permission allowing consultants on public‑only contracts to provide private maternity care inside the public facility.
- The HSE and Department have given the Rotunda until Monday to produce an audit listing which public‑only consultants did private work, how many babies they delivered and what charges were applied.
- The Rotunda board has asked for a meeting to explain its September 2024 decision to permit the practice but the Department says it needs a formal explanation showing alignment with Government policy before the minister will meet the board.
- Officials say there is no clear liability cover for private activity in this setting because the Clinical Indemnity Scheme indemnifies public hospitals not individual private work, and the minister has said women who paid for private services the hospital could not contractually provide should be recompensed.
- The dispute tests the 2023 public‑only consultant contracts, affects 14 of 32 Rotunda consultants, and could prompt tighter enforcement of the policy that ended routine private practice in public hospitals and reshape access to private maternity care.