Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputies Catherine Connolly, Joan Collins and Thomas Pringle for tabling the motion. I know the debate is being keenly watched by people campaigning to ensure our National Maternity Hospital is in public control and I am not very reassured by the statements this morning from the Minister.

Three years after the referendum repealing the eighth amendment to the Constitution, which ensured we could finally access abortion services in this country, we are faced with the promised state-of-the-art new national maternity hospital being controlled and run by a religious order of the Sisters of Charity. I do not know what kind of imagination the Minister has but I cannot see how it would sit comfortably with that order to provide abortion services, IVF treatment, vasectomy, which it currently refuses to provide, sterilisation and operations such as gender realignment. I do not understand how the Minister can assure us on that. He stated that a legal framework is being developed to protect the State's investment in the new hospital and ensure it remains in State ownership without religious, ethnic or other distinction. It is difficult to understand or accept.

We need our Government to take the new national maternity hospital into public ownership. It should own the land on which it sits and control every aspect of it. Looking at the cost of the national children's hospital, it is likely that nearly €1 billion or more will be spent on the maternity hospital building. The Government has said it endorses this motion but it is like it is asking us to trust it and the Sisters of Charity. During the campaign to repeal the eighth amendment, we constantly asked people to trust women and I trust them to make their own choices. I cannot trust the State and the Department of Health with the record they have on reproductive healthcare and women's rights. It is absolutely appalling, whether we start with the mother and baby homes, the Magdalen laundries, the X case, Savita Halappanavar, the A, B, C and Y cases, women being forced abroad, the symphysiotomy and CervicalCheck scandals or vaginal mesh surgeries. You name it and the Department of Health and this State have overseen it with some of the worst treatment of women and their healthcare needs.

If all the decisions are being made by the State in that hospital, there are some glaring contradictions in the Minister's contentions. At the end of this, we need agreement with the Ministers concerned that this session on the motion, although very welcome, important and timely, should be continued with a longer debate with questions and answers to the Minister on the specifics of this deal. These specifics are being obscured and glossed over and the language is very worrying. We must demand at the Business Committee to go through these matters.

There is disquiet about the ownership, governance and ethos of the planned new maternity hospital for good reason. New information has recently emerged that assurances given on the ethos in 2017 cannot be relied on. The proposed facility, although expected to levy a cost on the taxpayer, will not be publicly owned and the State will have no involvement with the private company running it. There is no way of compelling the new private company, as planned, to provide services that fly in the face of Catholic ethos. A 2019 Government-commissioned report on the role of voluntary organisations in publicly funded healthcare indicated its premise on the fact that legally the State cannot compel private Catholic entities to provide services contrary to their ethos. The nuns have yet to divest themselves of the assets and they still own the lands and particularly the site on which it is planned to build the hospital.

According to the Catholic Church, abortion is one of the most serious crimes of all and one must ask what precaution has been taken by the nuns to ensure the services will be provided in the new national maternity hospital that could undermine their own teaching. Legal instruments relating to ownership and governance structures, constitutions, leasing and licensing arrangements, along with staff contracts and conditions, are all aimed at enforcing compliance with the ethos of the Catholic Church. A clear statement of this ethos can be found in the hospital's job specification, which cites that the core values of the Religious Sisters of Charity, under the new holding company, St. Vincent's Holdings CLG, will set its healthcare delivery in a religious framework.

Honestly, how can we be expected to trust the Government when we read that the St. Vincent's Holdings company directors are legally bound to uphold the ethos of the congregation? That is not my ethos or that of the vast majority of people. It is not what delivered us a massive change in this country with the referendum on repealing the eighth amendment.

There can no longer be obfuscation and confusion about where we are going with this new national maternity hospital. If we are not going to sit down and have an honest debate, with the Minister forensically questioned about all the matters relating to the contract and holding company arrangements, we are going nowhere. We cannot just fire statements back and forth here without such forensic questioning. Like everybody else, I am extremely worried that this is hurtling to a conclusion and the hospital deal will be done very soon. I appeal to everybody in the House to demand that cross-party debate to bring this matter forward.

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