Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I apologise to colleagues as unfortunately, I must leave straight after this speech but the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, will be here.

It has been agreed by all sides that we urgently need a new, state-of-the-art, secular, public, co-located national maternity hospital that provides all healthcare services to women and infants. This morning, that is exactly what the Government agreed to. The new hospital will radically improve access to the best possible healthcare. It will provide specialist care for women via a physical corridor to St. Vincent's University Hospital. It will have single occupancy en-suite rooms for all women, with space for partners to stay. It will have single-cot neonatal intensive care rooms and will increase the number of cots from 35 to 50. It will increase the number of delivery rooms from 11 to 24. It will increase the number of operating theatres from two to five and the number of gynaecology beds from 18 to 31. It will have appropriate bereavement facilities. It will be home to a range of important community-based healthcare services.

The new hospital will be entirely secular. Its founding rules, which are the constitution of the NMH, state there can be no religious ethos. It also states not only can the new hospital provide all services, it must provide all services. The State, via the Minister for Health, will have the power to directly intervene if the hospital fails to meet these requirements. The State will own the hospital and the land for the next 300 years. This has been confirmed by the HSE, the National Maternity Hospital, St. Vincent's Healthcare Group and the Attorney General. The Government added three decisions today in response to the concerns raised and discussed over the past two weeks. First, there will be an annual report on the operation of services at the new national maternity hospital for five years from when it opens. Second, I will request the clinical director of the national women and infants programme to scope out and bring forward a proposal on a centre of excellence for women's health and, third, the term "clinically appropriate" allows the new hospital to provide all legally permissible procedures in the areas of maternity, gynaecology, obstetrics, neonatology and gender recognition.

The term "clinically appropriate" was added to the agreement by the HSE. Colleagues opposite me in the Chamber are asking for an HSE-run hospital. It was the HSE that insisted on this phrase. It wanted this phrase to protect and future-proof women's health services. For years, these services have been squeezed by other services in hospitals. When pressure comes on for urgent access to facilities, such as diagnostics, beds and operating theatres, doctors will tell you it is often things like gynaecology lists in operating theatres that get cancelled first. We are determined to put an end to that. We are absolutely determined the new hospital will be for healthcare services for women and infants, which cannot be pressurised and pushed to the side by pressures from other services. We all agree we have incredible healthcare professionals working in women's healthcare in community and hospital settings, and in maternity, gynaecology, mental health, oncology, screening, well-being and many more. I have met many of them over the past few years. I know that colleagues have also met many of these healthcare workers. We have seen with our own eyes the fantastic work they do. We have also seen the daily pressure they are under and the difficulties they face because of inadequate facilities.

When I took office I ensured women's healthcare was a top priority for this Government. Our first ever women's health action plan was published earlier this year. The national maternity strategy is now fully funded and includes hundreds of additional posts in maternity services throughout the country. We are seeing new infrastructure improvements with theatres refurbished and home-away-from-home suites added to many of our maternity units. We are hiring lactation consultants to provide breastfeeding supports nationally. We are building a new national network of healthcare services. Between last year and this year, we will open six specialist menopause clinics, a national network of 20 see-and-treat gynaecology clinics and six regional fertility clinics. I hope to get funding in the Estimates next year to start providing publicly-funded IVF treatment for the first time. We are opening six specialist endometriosis clinics. We are rolling out free contraception, starting this year with young women aged 17 to 25. We are setting up new mental health teams, including for eating disorders and perinatal mental health.

The new national maternity hospital is absolutely central to this ongoing vision. It is the biggest investment in women's healthcare in the history of the State. All the guarantees we have been discussing over the past few weeks regarding clinical and operational independence, no ability for any religious interference, state-of-the-art facilities and all services being provided is why midwives, nurses and doctors in the NMH, and throughout the country, are speaking publicly and asking us all as legislators to support this very important new hospital.

The task now is to get the new hospital built as quickly as possible. I very much look forward to engagement with colleagues on an ongoing basis. We can all agree we have a history in this country of taking too long to build hospitals. Indeed, it was pointed out to me this morning that the procurement process alone for one of the hospitals in recent times took two years. We have a big advantage here. Planning permission is already in place, the detailed design is done, the legal frameworks are in place and the business case, which will be externally validated, is being developed. What I want to see and want to work with colleagues on is pushing this forward, while genuinely respecting everyone's views.

That is why we added three new decisions to the memo this week that were not in the memo two weeks ago. I hope we can all work together to push and ensure that this hospital gets built as quickly as possible.

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