Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is hard to believe we are in this State in 2022 and when we talk about the State I often think “state” is a good word for us because we are in a bit of a state. Here we having statements and there is no additional information or clarity in the Minister’s statement. We are still trying to sort out our national maternity hospital to offer state-of-the-art medical services on a secular site. Women want a maternity hospital way and far beyond the reach and the neck of the old proverbial crozier. It is mad to think that we are even having these statements and this conversation in 2022 because in the 21st century every woman should be able to walk into our national maternity hospital secure in the fact that she is on secular ground. Women need to know their treatment will be strictly according to their medical needs and wishes without even a suggestion, look, sight or say from a religious order, its ethos or its agents. Yet here we are and here we go into another round of talking about something that should have been sorted and settled long ago. We want our maternity hospital on land owned by the State, controlled by the State and run by the State and not by private companies or charities. It should be the State alone. We have reasons to be concerned.

On a related note, our treatment of pregnant women generally continues to leave a lot to be desired. Throughout Covid, which is still with us, women were left to birth alone without their partners or birth partners and all the talk in here was about when we would open the pubs and put hospitality above our maternity hospitals. Instead women went through early birth labour alone, sometimes through delivery with daddy being confined in the car park or left out in the dark and the cold. There were jokes on social media that women would be better off giving birth in the pubs because then the daddies could have been allowed to be present.

On another relevant matter, Covid-19 put paid to the Coombe Women's Hospital antenatal clinic that was run in Naas General Hospital. I assure the Minister that the women of north Kildare are anxious to get that back. A reply to a recent parliamentary question told me that in time consideration would be given to a midlands location for that clinic but I want to tell the Minister and the HSE that mná Chill Dara will not be ceding the clinic at Naas to anywhere else and we will be loud and clear about that. In the meantime it is crucial that all infrastructure be attended to and kept as state-of-the-art as possible.

I will return to the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, which holds a special place in the hearts of many women who have given birth there and who have had their first real experience of unconditional love there when holding their babies. After 100 years of the conservative politics of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael we are still not on our journey to make sure our national maternity hospital is secular and independent and to getting a national maternity hospital offering world-class care to mothers and their babies on a site owned and run by the State alone. That is a red line for us. We do not want a charity; we are far beyond that. The past 100 years was way too long for our women and girls. We want to stand on ground that is, in its own way, sacred to us because it caters for us and our needs and does not answer to anybody else or to any religious order. That needs to be done.

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