Ms Orla O'Connor:

The National Women’s Council of Ireland, NWCI, shares the concerns that the Deputy mentioned. The NWCI is on record as saying, and all our members are very clear on this, we believe the new national maternity hospital should be a public hospital and that is the only way we can absolutely guarantee that there will be full reproductive healthcare within hospitals. We have also had the experience of Covid-19 where the Minister and the CMO say certain things should be happening in hospitals and yet that was not the case in regard to maternity restrictions. We have many concerns about the new national maternity hospital but in particular in regard to the provision of reproductive healthcare. Similar to the Deputy, we see what could be within the legal definitions about the clinical appropriateness. That absolutely raises concern. We already have the experience where we do not have full coverage of abortion services throughout our maternity hospitals. Now it seems as though we are going to have this new hospital which will be there for the future and which it is likely will face similar issues that we now face in other maternity hospitals. It is absolutely an issue that the Minister needs to address. In our view, it needs to go further in that it needs to be a public hospital.