Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

At some indeterminate point last week it became clear that the Government was spinning its wheels on what was supposed to be an open and inclusive consultation on the various documents. For me it was clear during a meeting of the Committee on Health last week that the Government was just stalling for time and playing us out. It was like the end of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" with the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, coming to briefings, to the Committee on Health and to the Dáil and just talking the clock and the days down until this moment.

We wonder why people feel so cynical about politics and politicians and this has been thrown across the floor from Opposition to Government and from Government to Opposition. In recent months, I have been on the Business Committee and I have seen multiple attempts to block statements and debate on this issue. We had to come up with a special arrangement for a Thursday sitting a few weeks ago and during that special arrangement, the Minister said that when the documents were released and the lease was ready, we would have a full debate. Then two weeks ago he marched into Cabinet seeking to push this through at which point it was stopped and it was decided to give it a couple of weeks and to have an open debate on it. That debate did not really happen. We had chats but the debate certainly was not open. We saw it in previous months in the Business Committee and we are seeing it now in the fact that this motion will not be opposed and that there will be no vote on it. To extend the cynicism, we saw the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, on social media a couple of hours ago with a video extolling the virtues of this deal that was retweeted some 200 times in the space of a couple of minutes by what looked like bot accounts. This is crazy stuff. Why did that happen? It happened because the Minister and the Government know they do not have the support of the women and people of Ireland on this issue. The gas thing is that no one will be looking one way or another at how many retweets a tweet gets but it just shows the insecurity the Government has in its stand on this.

We are clear in our position and we have been for a number of years and we desire to see the land compulsorily purchased. We asked how many of the three Ministers who were in power asked for the advice of the Attorney General on that and we did not get a clear answer. The Minster, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, said that he sought the advice of the Attorney General but we did not get any indication as to what that advice said, never mind what the previous two Ministers asked from their Attorneys General. Despite all the talk in this Chamber, in the Committee on Health and elsewhere in recent weeks and months the Labour Party still has massive concerns about the ownership, control and governance of the new national maternity hospital. We are not the only ones; we are not the only ones in this House and we are not the only ones in politics who have concerns. Across the legal and clinical profession we have the likes of Dr. Chris Fitzpatrick of The Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital who came out in recent days and said that he felt that clinicians will not have the necessary guarantees that they would be able to carry out the various procedures that are legally permissible in this State.

Where are we now? It has gone through Cabinet and the Minister has said the design is done and that we are going to push through to procurement. Here we are with an imperfect ownership situation. No matter what way the Government tries to dress it up, it is not perfect. When the Taoiseach was in opposition he said he wanted fully public ownership of the land and we do not have that, which is a fact. We have the 300-year lease and that is imperfect. We have a golden share model, which means that 300 years into the future every woman in Ireland will have to hope that the incumbent Minister for Health is pro-choice and that he or she will never have to use his or her golden share. If anyone thinks that is a perfect model and is something that should be used now or should ever be used again, then he or she is living in fantasy land. We have imperfect ownership and a model that means that every woman in Ireland will have that concern and worry in their stomachs that this golden share will have to be used. We only have to look at the United States in recent weeks to see how the situation can change in a matter of moments.

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