Dáil debates

Tuesday, 10 May 2022

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions

 

2:45 pm

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

Let us move away from the historical legacy of the religious order's involvement and the mistrust and take at face value what the Taoiseach is saying, that we will effectively own the hospital. The St. Vincent's Healthcare Group fact sheet, which is very useful, asks on page 2: "Who owns the NMH?". It states: "The new NMH DAC will be part of St Vincent’s Healthcare Group."

It asks: "Who owns the land where the NMH [new maternity hospital]...facility will be built?" The reply is: "The land is owned by St. Vincent's Healthcare Group." Why will the national maternity hospital be owned and run by St .Vincent's? One of the reasons it gives is that the floors in the new building, apart from being physically integrated, will have both the national maternity hospital and St. Vincent's University Hospital clinical and non-clinical facilities and that, somehow, it would be really difficult to integrate the care of women on these floors between one set of clinicians and the other unless St. Vincent's Healthcare Group group maintained a serious interest in the new national maternity hospital. Does it maintain it? Yes, it does.

One of the six stipulations for the rent on the land remaining at a tenner a year, rather than going up to a million euro a year, is that the HSE will never attempt to acquire St. Vincent's interest. What happened to Sláintecare? What happened to the aspiration of the State to move away from private, voluntary and two-tier medicine to a fully State-owned, publicly run and controlled health service? That has gone out the window. One of those stipulations will not allow us to do that unless we are prepared to say to St. Vincent's that we will give it a million a year for land on which we build a publicly funded hospital. This does not stack up, and it needs to be answered.

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