Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

If I was starting on it, from now onwards, hospitals would be fully State hospitals. Co-location was correctly identified by experts in medicine and health as being the optimal configuration to produce better outcomes for women, with maternity hospitals co-located on tertiary hospital sites. While it has happened for other locations, the only place it has happened with a major hospital is at Cork University Maternity Hospital, which is on the site of Cork University Hospital. The idea that there would be a relationship between St. Vincent's hospital and Holles Street hospital was mooted 20 years ago. It is not because of any religious ethos, but because it would combine two high-quality hospitals to get better outcomes for women. That was the original motivation, rather than what the Deputy is suggesting.

We do have, historically, a model of healthcare in Ireland that prior to the 1940s and 1950s has been led by religious orders. That was how things evolved historically. In many instances, increasingly this is reducing very significantly. In the case of St. Vincent's University Hospital, they are now out of the equation. They are most certainly out of the equation with regard to the National Maternity Hospital. They have no involvement and they will have no involvement. We need to accept that, at least, as a factual position. There is no religious ethos involved in this new national maternity hospital and there will not be.

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