Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I too want to raise the issue of the National Maternity Hospital. I welcome the decision by Cabinet last night to delay, as I understand it, by at least two weeks, the making of any final decision. I welcome the Minister's commitment to appear before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health, as we had asked. Indeed, I welcome the ongoing publication of documents on the HSE website. I read the documents that were up last night. I note another one this morning. That is important but the concerns around ownership, control and governance of the new national maternity hospital remain, notwithstanding the changes and the publication of those documents.

In particular, the key question everyone is asking is, if this is public ownership in all but name, why not move to public ownership? If a 299-year lease amounts effectively to State ownership, why do we not see a gifting of this site to the State, so that it is truly and beyond doubt within public ownership rather than this Byzantine series of legal arrangements?

I have waded through these documents and they are complex. We have seen legal counsel previously describe these as labyrinthine complex arrangements, making it difficult to establish with certainty the issues of control and governance. These are legitimate concerns that have been raised, including concerns raised by two members of the HSE board. We understand they are legitimate concerns raised by women at the Cabinet table, as a result of which we are seeing this delay. These are legitimate questions and we are asking why we simply cannot move to public ownership.

Why can we not request or require the site on which the hospital is to be built to be gifted to the State or, indeed, move to compulsorily purchase it? We in the Labour Party have been calling for a compulsory purchase order to be considered as an option since as long ago as 2017. That is five years ago. Had the State moved at that time, the site would now be in public ownership and we would not see these ongoing and real concerns around governance and control. There are valid concerns emerging from those documents on governance and control. There are valid and substantive concerns around the control issue when we look at who the directors will be and when we see that the landlord, the St. Vincent's Healthcare Group, will have the right to appoint three directors to the new national maternity hospital designated activity company and, indeed, under the terms of the constitution of that company, will therefore have the right to appoint a chairperson in three years' time on a rotating basis. That means the landlord will have a very strong influence in how the tenant runs its affairs. That is a valid concern arising from the documents.

There is also a valid concern around governance when one looks at the key phrase "clinically appropriate". It is in there twice in the constitution of the new company. It is also included in the operating licence and yet it is not present in the clause around the golden share of the Minister, clause 5.3 in the constitution which states the Minister's golden share is to ensure that the obligations are complied with and that any maternity, gynaecological, obstetric and-or neonatal services which are lawfully available in the State shall be available in the new national maternity hospital. Let us see that phrase used elsewhere and those qualifying and conditional words, "clinically appropriate", removed from the document. Otherwise we are going to continue to have these concerns around ownership, control and the governance of women's healthcare access.

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