Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

After decades of women campaigning, fighting and, in some instances, begging for healthcare, we are standing here today with a Government that has signed off on a deal that fails to deliver a public hospital on public land. Instead, it has signed us up to a convoluted lease that will run for 300 years. It is obvious to the most uneducated person in economics out there that the investment of €1 billion would have been much better protected by ensuring that we owned the land that we were spending that money on. However, yesterday we learned that despite the fact that the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Minister had been asked to sit down with the St Vincent’s Healthcare Group to negotiate that transfer, no meaningful engagement happened to do that. Despite the Government’s stance that the transfer of land was some form of legal quagmire, we also learned that the Sisters of Charity did that without precondition.

There was no legal barrier. Is it any wonder that women are so concerned about this agreement when neither the Taoiseach nor the Minister for Health has made any serious attempts to have this land transferred, while telling this House that transition was not possible? We all want this hospital. Lord knows, the women of Ireland need this hospital. However, the real issue here is the failure of the Government to secure the land for public ownership.

The phrase "clinically appropriate", which caused so much concern to so many stakeholders up to yesterday, seems to have completely disappeared off into the ether because the Cabinet understands its meaning. There is now no need for legal guarantees. The Cabinet is saying trust it, take another leap of faith and forget all the horrors that have happened in women's healthcare to date because the Cabinet understands. I do not know one woman who is willing to take another leap of faith with their healthcare - not even one - while barriers still exist out there. The Minister well and truly knows that they do.

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