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

There is growing concern about the proposed new national maternity hospital. That concern is based on two issues: the question of ownership and the question of ethos. On ownership, most people simply cannot fathom why the State would even contemplate gifting a valuable asset worth more than €300 million to a private entity. That must stop. Does the Taoiseach agree?

There is also grave concern, especially among women, about the fact that it is proposed to transfer ownership of the new national maternity hospital - and it will be called the National Maternity Hospital - to a private religious entity, the St. Vincent's Healthcare Group. It is wholly inappropriate that this should be the case in this day and age. The fear, which is very well founded, is that women will be denied access to the full range of healthcare services provided for under the law. We know that religious orders have a special place in the Constitution. Under Article 44, a religious order can control what it owns. When the Supreme Court has been asked to interpret this part of the Constitution it has always supported the right of the order to protect its own ethos. We know that when it comes down to deciding the ethos of Elm Park the Constitution will have to prevail and the order will win out.

The Mulvey report was a brokered deal done behind closed doors between two private institutions, St. Vincent's and Holles Street, with no reference at all to the public interest but the Minister, Deputy Harris, continues to blindly maintain that the Mulvey report can provide a solution. What is the status of this report now? Surely it is redundant.

In May 2017, the Minister for Health asked for a month to get to grips with the crisis facing him. He has now had 17 months and he has not managed to square this circle because it is simply not possible. Can the Taoiseach now give an undertaking that the new national maternity hospital will be taken into public ownership as a condition of public funding; that the more than €300 million which has been earmarked for the new build will be conditional on this change in ownership; and that the new national maternity hospital will be governed by a new secular charter which is fit for the 21st century?

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