Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

It is time to take off the gloves with the Sisters of Charity. Let us remind ourselves of who we are dealing with. The Sisters of Charity were heavily involved in the illegal adoptions racket. The St. Patrick's Guild that they ran handed over files to Tusla in 2016, leading to the discovery that the guild was involved with 126 illegal adoptions. However, this is unlikely to have been the entire story and experts reckon there may have been as many as 10,000 illegal adoptions in the State. How many of these involved the Sisters of Charity? That is unknown but nobody believes it was limited to 126.

St. Vincent's Hospital moved to Elm Park in 1970. Did funds from the illegal adoption racket help to fund the arrangements at that location? The Sisters of Charity owe the State redress money of €5 million, which is a paltry amount, given the crimes the order is linked with from the past. I stand to be corrected but the latest information I could obtain indicates less than half of this - a mere €2 million - has been paid and no payment has been made for the past eight years.

The Minister will be mandated by the House to tell the Sisters of Charity that the hospital will be owned and controlled by the State and that it will be built on State land. While he is at it, he should feel free to tell the sisters that there are Deputies in the House who would like to go much further and who favour the confiscation of the wealth of the Sisters of Charity, with compensation to be paid only on the basis of proven need. These Deputies stand for the separation of the church from the State and will participate in the protest demonstration this Saturday. They will argue for ongoing and much larger protests if the matters at stake now are not resolved satisfactorily and quickly.

See this speech in context