Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The maternity sector in this country has been critically and consistently understaffed for many years. We have one of the lowest levels of consultant obstetricians and gynaecologists in the OECD, which is shameful. Maternity services have been pockmarked by multiple investigations and inquiries into care, standards and practices. Sadly, the development of a new and improved national maternity hospital has been in the pipeline since the 1990s. Since 2013, it has been in each programme for Government which in and of itself is telling of how much of our priority maternity services are to this and previous Governments.

In 2017, my party moved a motion that received unanimous support to ensure that the new national maternity hospital remained entirely within public ownership, and rightly so. Despite support from every side of the Chamber, its provisions were never implemented and here we are today.

The public rightly want clarification from the Government about who, in effect, will run this hospital. The motion notes that nearly four years after the Religious Sisters of Charity committed to departing St. Vincent's Healthcare Group it remains the sole shareholder. Why is the ownership of the capital lands being transferred to a proxy church charity rather than being handed over to the State? What has been going on within the engagement?

The Minister, Deputy Donnelly, spoke on the radio earlier and essentially tried to deny the relationship between who owns land and the governance of the hospital. That is not good enough. The Mulvey agreement that emerged as a resolution in 2016 is not fit for purpose. The State must own the land. A 100-year lease is not good enough. Follow-through and action needs to be taken to ensure respect and independence from religious influence for our mothers and babies is now needed.

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