Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman for letting me in on the meeting to replace Deputy Kenny. A number of matters arise from the conversation and are not necessarily the original questions I was going to ask. This is not a criticism of the Minister but is an effort to find out what exactly he knows, does not know, and is being told about this because he was asked earlier how Deputy Varadkar was able to say to the public in 2019 that the hospital would be fully owned by the State. The Minister was not able to answer that question; he did not know. He was also asked if he could confirm if any terminations had taken place in the hospital and he was not able to answer that question.

I want to differ with the Minister on where he is getting his facts because the National Women’s Council of Ireland recently conducted a survey on the delivery of abortion services post repeal in the hope that very soon we would be having a review of the legislation, which is meant to happen before the end of this year. One of the things the survey was able to show quite clearly was that approximately half of the maternity hospitals in the country do not deliver abortion services at all since the legislation was passed. If the National Women’s Council of Ireland can find that piece of information, it seems extraordinary the Minister cannot establish whether terminations, which are just one service of women's reproductive health which women are legally entitled to, as indeed men are to vasectomies, can be performed currently in St. Vincent’s University Hospital. I find it extraordinary that the information the Minister is giving the joint committee is not adequate.

I will return to the key question, which is the one of ownership. The Minister in his statement conveniently goes back to the letter published in The Irish Times where 42 senior clinicians expressed concern that misinformation and misunderstanding could delay what they describe as a vital project. I accept the Minister’s bona fides that we all have to have this, and sooner rather than later. Is it not a fact, and it was more or less admitted by a civil servant in the previous meeting we had, that for the past eight years this project has been held up because of, as the Minister has quoted, the many legal entities that have been involved in discussing it? Is the core issue not the ownership of the land? If the State had owned the land, would this legal and tortuous process and this complex method of how companies and charities deal with this issue have been an obstacle?

The Minister has said to us and in the Dáil that his preference is for the State to own the land. Will he now publicly call on the Religious Sisters of Charity to hand or gift over that land to the State? The Minister has the high moral ground here. We have been pumping €300 million of taxpayers’ money a year into St. Vincent’s Healthcare Group. Why, therefore, does he not publicly call on the religious order to hand over the land to the people?