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

On the Deputy's last point, a general strike across the country to address the cost of living crisis would be a good idea at the moment, and would be a good example of unity on a Shared Island basis, but that is not the point I wanted to make.

The Taoiseach referred to the role of women on an all-island basis. Notwithstanding the Government's commitments on the new national maternity hospital, which we are very sceptical about, I wonder whether all procedures that should be available to women, and are legally available to women, will actually be provided, given the influence of the Sisters of Charity on the St. Vincent's Hospital Group and their ownership of the site. What sort of signal does it send to the North, to women and to the idea of diversity and inclusivity on an all-island basis, when we are trying to overcome decades of sectarian division, the idea of sectarianism itself and the domination of State institutions of services like health and education, that the new national maternity hospital will be on a site owned by a private religious charity? Does that not just completely undermine any credibility we might have as being serious about a different type of Ireland that breaks from the past and will be attractive to people from all political traditions, about bringing about unity in this country and about bringing genuine co-operation, on an all-island basis, to critical things like women's healthcare?

Indeed, there is the wider fact that the majority of our schools and much of our health service continues to be in the hands of private religious organisations dominated by one particular religious viewpoint. Is that not problematic? Does the Taoiseach not think we have to do something about that and to separate church and state in all areas, particularly women's healthcare, if we are to be taken seriously in terms of uniting this country on an all-island basis?

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