Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Has it anything to do with that? Is it not bizarre that the Minister on the other side of the House finds us niggling and annoying because we keep asking this and because we looked for this debate? Then he comes into the House and does not even explain to us how this whole process is working. We will come out of here believing at the end of it, as will the people in the Gallery, that the Minister intends to hand over €1 billion worth of taxpayers’ money to a new state-of-the-art maternity hospital, with the best facilities and all the rest of it into the control of a religious order. This a religious order that has a legacy in this State of running Magdalen laundries and having illegal adoptions through the St. Patrick’s Guild. Has it anything to do with history? Has it anything to do with the position of women for decades in this country?

Shame on you. If the Minister was still sitting up beside me when we had to share the same row when he was in opposition, he would be saying exactly the same thing now. However, he has completely done a U-turn on his position on it. I want to make a reference to one line in the Minister’s statement. He says, "Second, to prevent any undue influence, religious or otherwise...". Why does the Minister not just say, "To prevent any religious influence in its totality"? Why is he sticking in the word "undue"? My "undue" might not be the Minister's "undue". I really am suspicious of what is going on here.

I also really resent the idea that the Minister spends all of his time listening to those on the front line, respect to the 52 professionals who wrote to him, but he must listen to them because they are the professionals. He has had nothing to say in response to today’s call by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, for the re-introduction of mask wearing in order to prevent the Covid-19 situation in hospitals getting out of control. I have not heard a single statement from him. If he is the one who listens to the nurses and the doctors all the time, why is he not responding to that? I am not just looking to pick holes in his statement, but there are a huge number of holes and I do not have time to go through them all. We are bitterly disappointed that we have not gained an inch of ground in this whole debacle.

Finally, I want to make this point. Whatever about the nuns, and there is a really serious case to be answered about the religious influence undue or otherwise, the Minister is handing the future of a maternity hospital that is publicly funded - the wages, the maintenance and the running of the hospital will be paid for by Joe Bloggs taxpayer and Josephine Bloggs taxpayer - over to a private company. Does that not fly in the face of Sláintecare? Does it not fly in the face of the future of all of the health services in this country? We have made huge mistakes by having combinations of voluntary, religious-run and all sorts of machinations. Now, we fundamentally need to make a break. Now is the opportunity to make a break, to separate church and State and to have the State own, run and control the new national maternity hospital.

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