Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I sat in the Taoiseach's office in 2016 following a general election as he was making his first attempt to ascend to the position he now holds. We talked at some length about privatisation within healthcare. I remember he used the private Bon Secours hospital in Cork as an example of private healthcare's over-reliance on the public system and the public purse to prop up its operations. He told me he was committed to the public provision of healthcare. Perhaps as a former leader of the Labour Party said, "Isn't that what you do during an election?" The Taoiseach's actions today speak volumes and tell me that his words to me on that day were not what he believes.

The spin machine has been working overtime this morning. The Taoiseach has been quoted as saying he has "no doubt that all the guarantees are there". The Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, said, "There will never be any religious influence on the services." The Minister for Justice said she is confident that the hospital will be secular. The Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, said that the past two weeks have provided absolute clarity on the secular status of the new hospital. The women of Ireland know that talk is cheap, particularly talk from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party. Over the course of the hearings held during the past two weeks, a number of questions, including questions I tabled to the Minister for Health last Thursday, remain unanswered despite the Minister's promise that answers would be forthcoming.

The recurring issue has been the unexplained term that appears like a rash throughout the various contracts, licences, constitutions, leases, fact sheets and option agreements. That phrase is "clinically appropriate". The Minister, Deputy Donnelly, initially explained that the term needed to be included to prevent St. Vincent's from turning the place into a drive-through McDonald's or the likes. That explanation holds no water and no better explanation has been put forward since. The National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street did not put that phrase there. St. Vincent's Hospital holding company, or whatever you are having yourself, said it did not put it there. The representatives put forward by those organisations at the committee meeting last week said they were happy for it to be removed and yet it is still there. Why? Its removal would go a long way to removing the ambiguity that the spider's web of corporate structures has created. It does not need to be clarified; it needs to be removed.

We all agree that the hospital should be a public hospital on public land. The Government even supported Deputy Joan Collins's Private Members' motion in that regard. As the Government appears to be hell-bent on ploughing on with a second-rate option, will it commit to the removal of the term "clinically appropriate" from all documentation relating to the development of the new maternity hospital? That is within the control of the Taoiseach and it emanated from a Government Department.

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