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

The publication of the women's health plan and the objectives outlined in it are very welcome. There are specific issues that relate to women's health and the recognition of that is an important step forward. I welcome especially the proposal for free contraception for 17- to 25-year-olds and the commitment to roll that out to those over 25 in the next period. It would be interesting to find out if there is a plan to roll that out and when. The proposals on period poverty are also very progressive. The increase in gynaecology centres is needed and the nine eating disorder support clinics are very welcome. Other issues were brought up but as everybody has said, this will all depend on whether the money needed for these services is provided, whether the commitment to introduce them is there and whether we have the staff to implement the plan. The devil will be in the detail.

The national maternity strategy is a key part of the overall plan, with a commitment to build four new state-of-the-art modern national maternity hospitals co-located with acute hospitals in Dublin, Cork and Limerick. We have a very serious problem with the new maternity hospital to be built on the Elm Park site in Dublin. I make no apologies for concentrating on the issue in this debate. The scheduled debate on the national maternity hospital later is yet another insult from the Government and the Minister for Health on this key issue. The debate will take place in the twilight zone of Dáil business to an empty Chamber as the majority of Deputies will have left to go back to their constituencies. In his foreword to the women's health plan, the Minister makes great play of listening to the concerns of women but on the key issue around the national maternity hospital the Government is not listening, and the Minister certainly is not. He did not attend the debate on the motion I moved on the national maternity hospital just two months ago. The Government did not oppose that motion, which called for the State to use a compulsory purchase order to acquire the Elm Park site to ensure the new national maternity hospital would be built on State-owned land and be operated as a fully State-owned facility. The Government also did not oppose two previous Private Member's motions calling for the new hospital to be fully State-owned and operated. This is not an honest position by the Government or the Minister. It is a tactic to avoid any real debate on the issues involved. So much for listening to the concerns of women.

The facts of the matter are simple, namely, co-location of the national maternity hospital with St. Vincent's acute hospital has been taken off the agenda. That was the key element of the Mulvey report that caved into the demands of the St. Vincent's Hospital Group. Instead of co-location, the national maternity hospital, to be built by the State at a cost of up to €1 billion, would be integrated into the St. Vincent's Holdings group, which would license the new hospital back to the HSE. No amount of negotiating and manoeuvring can disguise this basic fact. The national maternity hospital will not be co-located. It will not be built on State-owned land. It will, in effect, be handed over to a private company that is a proxy for the Religious Sisters of Charity and the Catholic Church. If that happens - and I have no doubt it is now the intention of the Minister and the Government, while dressing it up as something else - it will be a shameful abdication by the State of its responsibilities to women. It will be an abdication of the desire to achieve a single-tier, free-at-point-of-use, universal and secular public health service. We know what subservience to the Catholic ethos has meant in the past, namely, the shame of the mother and baby homes, forced illegal adoptions, young girls forced to go away to have their babies and then give them up, the lonely journeys to Liverpool and elsewhere to end a crisis pregnancy and the barbaric practice of symphysiotomy. We need to send a very clear message that is all in the past and a message to the Religious Sisters of Charity and others that they no longer rule the roost. We need to stand up and the Government needs to listen.

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