Two consultants are taking separate judicial reviews against the Health Service Executive (HSE) seeking the right to offer private care in new publicly funded surgical hubs.While the two separate judicial reviews are being taken against the health service, Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill is applying to join the case as a notice party. The HSE is in the middle of a large project to open six new surgical hubs across the country, where it is estimated around 10,000 day cases and minor procedures and 18,500 outpatient consultations will be delivered per year. The new publicly funded facilities are part of a policy to try to move more elective and scheduled care out of acute hospitals, to improve waiting lists and waiting times. One surgical hub has already opened in south Dublin at the Mount Carmel community hospital, and another is due in Swords, north Dublin at the end of this month. The four other surgical hubs will be in Limerick, Galway, Waterford and Cork. In January 2025, the HSE received a query from St James’s Hospital about whether or not the south Dublin surgical hub could be used for private patients. The HSE clarified that the hubs were only for public patients. Private patients could be treated on site, but only as public patients and no private health insurance claims could be made for treatment provided in the new hubs. The following June, the HSE received confirmation that solicitors acting for two individual consultants intended to take a judicial review against the health service for its prohibition of private practice in surgical hubs. The consultants are Prof Brian Manning, a vascular surgeon based in Cork, and Prof Rustom Manecksha, a consultant urological surgeon based in Dublin. Both are understood to be on older contracts which still allow public and private care; neither is on a new public-only contract. Consultants on older contracts are given provision to carry out private practice in public hospitals. It is understood that the judicial review is being taken by the consultants who feel that the prohibition of private practice in the new surgical hubs is a breach of their legitimate expectations. The judicial reviews were filed last summer and the case is continuing. Since last year, the Department of Health has been seeking permission to join the proceedings. The Chief State Solicitor last year prepared and submitted an application for the Minister to become a notice party. The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) declined to say if it was supporting the case, but did say that it “provides a range of supports to its members, including assistance on industrial relations, contractual and legal matters”. It said it would be a breach of data protection law to comment on “whether any individual consultant is or is not a member of the association”. “The association also does not comment on the supports that any individual member may or may not avail of as part of their membership,” a spokesman said. “More broadly, the IHCA is supportive of individual consultants protecting and defending their individual contractual rights, and is assisted in this regard by a panel of legal providers who can assist the association and its members in such matters.”Legal firms acting for both the HSE and the consultants did not respond to requests for comment. The judicial review has emerged after a dispute between the Government and the country’s biggest maternity hospital, the Rotunda, over private practice in public hospitals. Earlier this week, the Rotunda backed down in a dispute over its decision to give consultants on public-only contracts permission to continue offering private care on-site at the hospital.