Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I intend raising this issue with the Taoiseach later and I will be looking for a clear, direct answer. If the situation remains as it is with the St. Vincent's Healthcare Group refusing to sell the site to the State, is the Government preparing to compulsory purchase order, CPO, the site, and if it is too costly and if it is too lengthy is the Government preparing to abandon the St. Vincent's Hospital site and begin the process of looking elsewhere? Women have to draw a red line on this. It cannot go on. This would obviously create a new problem as there is an urgent need for a new up-to-date national maternity hospital but the Government must make its position clear. The day when religious institutions or, in this case, their proxies can dictate to the State and to the women of this country while enjoying 100% State funding are over.

I commend the Social Democrats for tabling this parliamentary motion in a timely fashion. I am pleased the Government is not opposing it but it will still not solve the problem.

The decision to locate a State-built, State-funded and much needed modern national maternity hospital without clarification as to the ownership of the site and the governance and ethos of the hospital has resulted in the present mess, and mess it most certainly is. The situation could only arise because the public service is a mess.

What we have is a public health service grafted onto an inherited system from the 19th century based on the ideology of the Poor Law and the provision of health for the poor as a charitable act provided, in the main, by the Catholic Church. In 2015, while I was a member of the committee which drew up the Sláintecare report, research showed that, of a State health budget of €13 billion, €3.6 billion went to non-statutory agencies. Fifty-three per cent of this went to acute voluntary hospitals and 47% to non-acute agencies. Section 38 and 39 agencies, numbering at least 3,000 different agencies, received some €3 billion. The level of outsourcing of essential services to charities and NGOs is simply mind-boggling. They should be directly employed by the HSE.

The current impasse on the National Maternity Hospital is a consequence of the fact that the political parties which have dominated the State for the past 100 years, the mandarins in the Department of Health, the leadership of the HSE and particular sections of the medical profession have all been happy to live with the situation, and that leaves aside the role of the Catholic Church in demanding a leading role in the provision of essential public services, such as health and education.

The situation in relation to the National Maternity Hospital is a test. Are we to have high quality free-to-use public services as a right for all in a modern secular Republic or will there be a shabby compromise with the State spending at least €800 million to €1 billion to build a hospital on land it does not own with the State funding 100% of the cost of staff, the board of governors nominated by a private charity and absolutely no certainty that all the medical procedures legal in the State will be provided to women who need them? Rights are exerted; charity is bestowed.

I want to make a point about what has happened in the past week. We had a statement from the Sisters of Charity to say they were going to gift the site to the Irish people. It then transpired quite clearly that the intent was that they were going to gift it to, in fact, a charity - their own holding company. Then we had the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, the Taoiseach and the Minister stating that the land must be in public ownership and that the governance should be in State control. Then we had the Sisters of Charity issue a statement saying that the ownership of the land was not an issue and the Government never raised it before - we know, in 2017, the then Minister, Deputy Harris, did. Then we had the statement yesterday from St. Vincent's Healthcare Group saying it must retain ownership of the land for clinical governance. We must as a State publicly own the land. We must retain the ownership of the land for clinical, governance and operational reasons, including the provision of the safe integrated system of our care.

I hear the Minister say this morning that he will meet the Sisters of Charity privately. I thought they were out of the equation since 2017.

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