Greg Daly
The proposed transfer of the St Vincent’s Healthcare Group to a new company independent of the Religious Sisters of Charity is subject to Vatican approval, The Irish Catholic understands.
The sisters announced this week that they intend to end an involvement in healthcare that dates back to 1834. Although the now mostly elderly sisters no longer have a direct frontline role in the provision of healthcare services, they are the sole shareholders of the group, consisting of St Vincent’s University Hospital, St Vincent’s Private Hospital and St Michael’s Hospital, Dun Laoghaire.
Controversially, the group is also expected to include the new €300m National Maternity Hospital which the Government wishes to site on St Vincent’s Elm Park campus.
Shareholding
According to Sr Mary Christian, the sisters’ congregational leader, the sisters have been “actively working” to relinquish their shareholding for the past two years and have decided to transfer their shares for a nominal price to a new company, ‘St Vincent’s’, which would have charitable status and would not be bound by the sisters’ Catholic ethos.
The sisters also intend to sell the new company the land upon which St Vincent’s Private Hospital is built, with this sale at commercial rates being expected to net the sisters several million euro.
The proposals are, however, subject to the implementation of regulatory, financial, and legal processes, with the latter including canonical scrutiny.
Under canon law, Irish Church bodies cannot dispose of assets valued at more than €348,460 without a just cause and a written appraisal of the assets to be disposed of, and should not ordinarily be transferred for a price less than indicated in the appraisal.
Perhaps more importantly, assets worth over €3,484,595 cannot be transferred without permission from the Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.
Under normal circumstances, the congregation would require at least confirmation from the local bishop – in this case Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin – that he has no objection to the plan.
So far, however, The Irish Catholic understands that the archdiocese has not been consulted about the plan, with a diocesan spokesperson explaining that in such matters, “canonical requirements are examined only when due process is underway and they cannot be determined in advance”.