Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I am glad to have the opportunity to make some comments on the Nationality and Citizenship Bill. Over the weekend, the statements emanating from Holles Street hospital in regard to women who expect to deliver a baby in that hospital gives the lie to what the Minister's referendum was about. We were told, in a series of highly declamatory and colourful interviews and statements by the Minister in the run-up to the referendum, that the referendum was a response to the abuse of citizenship tourism. One would have thought that since the referendum has removed the apparent pull factor in regard to tourists for birth purposes in our maternity hospitals, this Government might at least have got its act together in respect of the maternity hospitals. Instead, we hear that since the referendum was passed overwhelmingly by the population, on foot of the Government's scare-mongering, the situation in our maternity hospitals has become infinitely worse. Will we be told shortly that it is because children from Wexford are being born in Dublin that maternity hospitals in Dublin are in crisis, and they are going to expel everybody from Wexford?

This Government has to get a grip. The position in maternity hospitals is a disgrace. It is a shame, in terms of the policy enunciated by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, that since the passage of this unwise referendum the crisis in the maternity hospitals has worsened to the point where the position is now worse than it was 100 years ago when hospitals like the Rotunda were set up primarily to cater for poor women who were at risk of dying in childbirth. Instead, we have returned, at the height of the prosperity of the Celtic tiger, to a position where throughout Dublin — the Minister may laugh but it is not a laughing matter — if somebody is expecting a baby——

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