Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Ireland has a dark history when it comes to the provision of health care for women and babies. My party's motion outlines the ongoing problems in that regard. Ireland has a long history of mistreating women and children. For too many decades the church colluded with the State in implementing and managing the horrendous practice of institutionalising women who were deemed to be problematic or inconvenient. Their children were institutionalised, too, owing to the perceived sins of their parents because they lived in poverty or for some other arbitrary reason. The Catholic Church managed this regime on behalf of the State.

Almost 60 years ago the mother and child scheme was scuppered by the Government of the day, albeit under pressure from the church. Now we have the ongoing issue of malpractice and cover-up in maternity hospitals. We have the lowest number of consultant obstetricians per head of population in the OECD. We do not have enough midwives and do not know if the Minister has a specific recruitment plan for the new hospital. We do not offer foetal anomaly screening to most women. The motion outlines a long list of shortcomings on the part of the State but handing over the National Maternity Hospital to the Sisters of Charity takes the biscuit. We all know that a new hospital must be built and that it must be built as quickly and efficiently as possible. However, it is unacceptable that the State should build the hospital and hand it over to the Sisters of Charity. The State is responsible for the provision of health care for citizens, not the church.

There have been too many cover-ups in the past and too many people were not, and still are not, held to account. Most recently, there has been the Tuam mother and baby home scandal. It follows a litany of scandals in which the church and State colluded, all under the guise of providing care. Why would we wish to continue a practice with such a dark history? Last week the Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, appeared to have been taken aback by the backlash against this plan. Is the Government so far removed from public opinion on this matter that it thought this was acceptable? Is it so out of touch with reality and the society it governs that it thought people would be happy with it? Women's health and women's rights must be at the core of the new hospital which must be State owned and State run.

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