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

I thank the Deputy. At the outset, I would like to state that I believe we all respect and value the role played by the Religious Sisters of Charity in providing healthcare and education down the years when the State did not. We all support the building of a new national maternity hospital at Elm Park. We need it and women need those modern facilities. Holles Street is a great hospital but it belongs to 200 years ago, not to today.

There are problems in going forward with this project. The Deputy and I agree on this more than she may believe. The hospital will be owned by the State. The governing constitution, memorandum and legal documents for the new hospital guarantee that all services currently available in Holles Street, including terminations, abortions, sterilisations, will be available in the new hospital.

There is not a concern around that but the Government has a big concern about two other aspects. First is the ownership of the land the hospital will be built on. That is not being gifted to the State but to a private charity. It is proposed that there be a 99-year lease to the State. We have a difficulty with that. We do not think the safeguards around that are strong enough. The land would be owned by a private charity rather than the State and only a 99-year lease would be provided. Second, we have a difficulty with the governance of the proposed new hospital. It will be a voluntary hospital. That is okay. There are many such hospitals and they work well. However, the board will not be appointed by the Government. That is a real difficulty because a hospital that is almost fully funded by the State should have a significant number or majority of members of the board appointed by the Government.

That is the problem we face at the moment. There are two things we are happy enough about: owning the hospital and the guarantee that all procedures legal in the State will be provided in the hospital. There is a difficulty about the ownership of the land it will be on. We are not happy with the lease proposal or the governance arrangements. We are working through those things at the moment.

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