The Sisters of Mercy have responded to criticism by a senior surgeon that religious orders are endangering the Catholic "caring ethos" by pulling out of private hospitals.
The order, which has 3,000 sisters in Ireland, was replying to an article in this week's Irish Catholic by an orthopaedic specialist, Mr James Sheehan, who is also a founder of Dublin's Blackrock Clinic.
Mr Sheehan said that if religious orders continued to sell off their hospitals they would do a "great injustice" to the church. He also questioned the role of the Catholic Hierarchy in the sale of the hospitals.
The surgeon said the closure of a number of private hospitals, including the private wing of St Michael's Hospital in Dun Laoghaire and the Mater Private Hospital, both of which were run by the Mercy Sisters, had exacerbated the shortage of acute hospital beds.
However, Sister Helena O'Donoghue, a spokeswoman for the Sisters of Mercy, said yesterday that the order had been forced for financial reasons to pull out of St Michael's and the Mater Private. Sister Helena said the order had made no profit on the £22 million deal and it had ensured the continued Catholic ethos of the hospital by binding the new owners legally to maintain it.
"The money to build the Mater Private in the 1980s was borrowed from the financial institutions, and we had a massive loan. It was a huge financial burden for us." she said. In addition, the £22 million paid by the board of management of the hospital to take it over would be paid to the sisters over 17 years. The staff and the management of the hospital had all been given a share when it was sold.
Sister Helena said the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell, was "fully au fait with the developments and fully supportive of them". The Mercy order still runs the 800-bed Mater public hospital.
On the closure of the private wing of St Michael's Hospital, Sister Helena said the hospital had failed because the consultants did not give it adequate support. "It had a very low bed occupancy, and because it was not viable we had to close it."