Steps taken by nuns to relinquish St Vincent’s Hospital 

The Charities Regulator has received an application to facilitate the transfer of the ownership of the site designated for the €350m National Maternity Hospital.

Currently, the Religious sisters of Charity own St Vincent’s Healthcare Group (SVHG) which includes St Vincent’s Hospital. They had announced that a new company limited by guarantee, with charitable status, St Vincent’s Holdings CLG, would be set up and made the sole owner of the site upon which the new Maternity Hospital would be built. The Sisters additionally had promised that they would relinquish all ownership and interest in the new company which will have no beneficial owner. Current directors of SVHG will serve as the first directors of the new company.

“An application for charitable status has been made by this entity,” a spokeswoman for the regulator said last week.

A spokeswoman for SVHG said the group “commenced the application process for charitable status for the new St Vincent’s Holdings CLG in December 2018 and this is progressing”. She said the new hospital “will be managed and operated by a new company, the NMH DAC, under an operating licence from the state”.