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

-----purchase order, costing a significant amount of taxpayers' money, being better value than a 300-year lease at €10 a year. I do not understand why the resources that would be wasted on a CPO would not go into the hospital instead. I do not get the logic of the proposition around the CPO five years on. The church is not involved in this, good, bad or indifferent. Surely the Deputy will take the words of Fergus Finlay regarding his experience of what has gone on here. He stated: "Nobody will have a controlling interest, and nobody will have a beneficial interest, except that the minister for health will have a 'golden share'", which protects the reserved powers of the new maternity hospital contained in the constitution. There is a legal constitution there now, which has been transparently published and which gives real protection in terms of the clinical, financial and operational independence of the hospital, but above all that states all services lawfully permitted in the State today and well into the future will be provided.

The Government has no agenda other than to provide the best of healthcare for women in the 21st century and for premature babies as early as 23 weeks who deserve better conditions than they currently have. We are talking about Nightingale wards, with curtains separating mothers at the moment, while in intensive care situations. We are talking about clinical transfers from one hospital to another across the streets of Dublin. Surely that is not acceptable?

There has to be a balance and a degree of perspective about this, which I think is now missing. One would honestly believe that the Government has some hidden, covert agenda to create a healthcare environment or a new hospital that would somehow deny people access to the laws that many of us worked for and voted for, in terms of changing the Constitution or enacting legislation in this House to ensure that women had all lawful services available to them. There is no Government agenda towards that end. There is no agenda here either from the HSE, which is giving the operational licence to the hospital.

It is the HSE that insisted on the language of "clinically appropriate", not anybody else, because it does not want any other type of hospital built other than a maternity hospital. We find consistently on this side of the House our bona fides and our integrity questioned in relation to this, not by the Deputy, I accept, but by many in the debate. There needs to be some sense of calm perspective applied and less clouding of the issues. I say that with respect.

See this speech in context