Pat McCann, the newly elected head of the National Maternity Hospital board, has said he will not ask St Vincent’s Healthcare Group (SVHG) to sell the site to the state because it is “irrelevant” who owns it.
McCann believes that as long as the state owns the hospital building, the ownership of the land is not important. “Where you have a building on a campus like St Vincent’s, it’s very common in Ireland and the UK that there are common services such as egress and car parks. The easiest way to manage that is to have a ground lease,” he said.
“The Intercontinental hotel in Dublin is built on ground owned by the RDS, but there is a ground lease and the RDS has no hand, act or part in how the hotel runs its business.”
The founder of the Dalata hotel group has arranged to meet James Menton, the chairman of SVHG, this week “to make sure we’re all aligned on what we’re doing”. He does not intend to meet the Religious Sisters of Charity, who own SVHG, as “they will have no hand, act or part” in the relocated National Maternity Hospital (NMH).
McCann, who joined the hospital board last May, was the only nominee for election as vice-chairman last week. He is now effectively the chairman, as the Catholic archbishop of Dublin, the ex-officio chairman, does not attend meetings.
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McCann succeeds Nicholas Kearns, a former president of the High Court, who resigned from the NMH in July and later said the Dublin Bay South by-election “had made things more complicated”. During the campaign, the tanaiste Leo Varadkar said state ownership of the NMH was a “red line” issue for the government. McCann said he “absolutely” supports the current plan for the state to own the new building on a site it will lease for 149 years from SVHG.
“The thing to watch is if there are any restrictive covenants in that lease,” he said. “There is only one: that what goes on the site is the hospital. All [medical] procedures that are legally available in the state will be available there.”
Under the plan, a new company to be called the National Maternity Hospital at Elm Park will have directors from St Vincent’s and the NMH plus a public interest member. That company will be owned by SVHG.
Once the state signs the lease, the nuns’ ownership of SVHG is to be transferred to another company, St Vincent’s Holdings, whose present directors are members of SVHG, including Menton.
McCann and Menton previously sat together on the board of Quinn’s Q Bar Property Ltd after the collapse of the Quinn Group.
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The company, which developed and managed hotels, had previously been owned by Seán Quinn, once Ireland’s richest man. Menton, a former senior partner in KPMG, was appointed chairman of the Quinn Group by the receiver in 2011.
“After the Quinn Group went into receivership, we shared a number of directorships,” McCann said. “Whether we knew each other in a previous life is irrelevant. What matters is that we are two pragmatic men who can work together.”
Asked why he had agreed to take the NMH reins for a project dogged by disputes since it was first announced in May 2013, McCann replied: “Somebody has to. I’m not a medical man by any stretch of the imagination, but I understand the way things work. What I do is I get things done.”
“Life has been good to me. I was thrilled to be asked and I think my experience in the world will benefit the project,” added McCann, 69, who is poised to retire as chief executive of Dalata in December.
“I’m not naive about it and it’s a non-paying role but this facility is needed for the women and babies of Ireland. I’ve two daughters. One of them gave birth to my first grandchild in Holles Street [NMH]. I’m acutely aware of how the women of Ireland, in particular, have been treated. That motivates me more than anything.”
