Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

As the Taoiseach knows, this is International Women's Day. In this country, church organisations have played a pretty terrible role, historically, in their treatment of women and their denial of rights to women. This is something we have begun to overcome with the successful campaigns to repeal the eighth amendment, for marriage equality and so forth. Yet, it is still the intention of this Government to pay for the new maternity hospital we need, but to leave it in the ownership of the Sisters of Charity.

This is an organisation that was part of the Ryan report and the residential institutions Bill; in other words guilty of abuse of women. It will be leased from them through a company that will be owned by the Sisters of Charity. By the way, at present, as I highlighted last week, they are just about to evict a blind 70-year-old woman who was in one of those institutions on that site. She still has not received compensation for her treatment at the hands of the Sisters of Charity. She is now being evicted by them. This is the organisation to which the Taoiseach will give the national maternity hospital. The Sisters of Charity have cancelled the lease with the HSE, which provided disability housing for this woman. Does the Taoiseach really think this organisation, which is doing this to women such as Eleanor, should be handed the national maternity hospital?

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