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19 Governance Rep ts NMH Annual Rep t | 2020 Architectural design of The National Maternity Hospital at its proposed co-location with St Vincent's University Hospital on the Elm Park Campus. T wenty twenty was a very unusual year and will be remembered worldwide for the COVID-19 pandemic. The potential issues regarding the pandemic were first discussed in the Hospital in early February and by the end of February we were having regular meetings regarding the issue. These meetings took place daily for a number of months and apart from NMH COVID-19 task force meetings there were daily meetings with the IEHG group. In the early weeks of the pandemic we were faced with potential PPE and equipment issues, concerns with testing capacity and turnaround times and at the same time we had significant staff numbers offsite due to the requirements to self-isolate if deemed a close contact. Immense gratitude to all of the NMH staff who persevered throughout the past months during often very difficult and stressful times. I am extremely grateful to all of those who participated in the COVID-19 response and to all of the members of the COVID-19 taskforce. I would especially like to thank the facilities engineering team for their innovative and rapid response with our "hospital within a hospital", our tendering and purchasing team for their very successful efforts in securing PPE from sources worldwide, the contact tracing team and also Dr Susan Knowles and our microbiology team for their work in supporting all of our staff and patients. In the midst of the pandemic the work on the move to the Elm Park campus continued. There was significant work on finalising the Business Case in the early months with some major reviews in relation to the proposed phasing of the building works. The final Business Case was approved by the Project Board in May and was submitted to the HSE in July for review and hopefully approval by the various departments including the Department of Health and DEPR. The Operational Readiness (OR) team onsite continued to work with Accenture up to the Secretary/General Manager's Rep t