Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I commend Deputy O'Reilly and her colleagues on tabling this timely motion. There is no doubt there are many shortcomings in our maternity services. While the maternity strategy is to be welcomed, it is meaningless unless it is adequately funded and implemented. That process needs to be accelerated in order to bring our services up to modern standards and made fit for purpose.

I want to concentrate on the issues surrounding the proposed move of the National Maternity Hospital. While I have some sympathy with the Minister who inherited this situation, it is not acceptable in any circumstances to proceed with the transfer of ownership of the hospital as proposed. Based on what we know of the agreement brokered last November, transferring ownership of a €300 million State asset to private interests is utterly unacceptable to the public. People are outraged by that.

The composition of the board is not acceptable under any circumstances. It is proposed to have four, four and one, with the one expert person being appointed effectively by St. Vincent's Healthcare Group. By any standard the proposed board structure gives St. Vincent's Healthcare Group a five-four majority on the board. That is quite clear from the details of the agreement.

It is incomprehensible for people that the Minister is proposing to set up a new company that is wholly owned by St. Vincent's Healthcare Group. There is no justification for that and people are horrified. They cannot understand how that was agreed to.

On clinical governance, the diagram in the Mulvey report shows that the master of the National Maternity Hospital along with a number of other clinical directors will be answerable to the overall clinical director of St. Vincent's Healthcare Group, who in turn is answerable to the CEO of St. Vincent's Healthcare Group, who in turn is answerable to the board of the St. Vincent's Healthcare Group. Under no circumstances can that be considered clinical independence; it simply is not the case.

The Minister has been landed into this. He signed up to this agreement last November, which was a mistake. It was a mistake to welcome that agreement, as the Taoiseach also did. Now that the detail of that agreement has come out, it is utterly unacceptable to the Irish public. The Minister has been at pains to talk about various safeguards. He has talked about reserved powers and a golden share, neither of which will carry any weight in law under the terms proposed at the moment. There are big legal questions over whether there is such a thing as a golden share, but that can come into play only within the boardroom and the Minister will not be in the boardroom. The idea of a golden share is deceiving people. Perhaps the Minister has been deceived on that, but it does not carry any weight, nor do reserved powers. They have no meaning in a subsidiary that is 100% owned.

In a letter to The Irish Timestoday, I pointed out a severe constitutional impediment to having any kind of independence for ownership transfers to a religious organisation. I set out the clear grounds and the case law in this regard. The Minister talks about being solution-focused. I hope he will bring forward solutions within the next month, but those solutions cannot entail the transfer of ownership of the new National Maternity Hospital to any outside agency. This is a public hospital. It is publicly funded and should be publicly owned in its entirety.

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