Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----Temple Street Children's University Hospital, which had an association with a religious body in the Mater Hospital, and the National Children's Hospital in Tallaght, which had an association with the Church of Ireland, and have taken them together and put them on a site that is publicly owned and which will be under a statutory board. We have a good example already of how we have taken three hospitals that had a voluntary religious ethos and put them together on one site with a statutory board. This is a matter that is not yet resolved but if the Deputy can see what we have done with the children's hospital, it is the kind of outcome we will be looking to achieve with regard to the national maternity hospital.

We have quite a number of voluntary hospitals in Ireland. A lot of our hospices are run by voluntary bodies which are often associated with religious bodies. We should not make an automatic assumption that it is always a bad thing because there is a long history and tradition of care there and many people have a very high regard for some of those hospitals.

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