Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is a publicly-owned hospital and given the way healthcare is evolving, there will be more of this. Healthcare has evolved over the last 100 years through different methods, in all countries, with non-religious voluntary hospitals like St. James's Hospital, which have their own independent governance mechanisms, and voluntary hospitals like St. Vincent's hospital. We have to deal with where we are and move on and co-location was the origins of this.

In terms of the issues in relation to lawfully and legally permissible, all of the legal documentation is there and all of the guarantees are there in terms of legally permissible and lawfully permissible services. The HSE put in the term "clinically appropriate" - not the other interest, but the HSE - to protect the maternity hospital and to ensure that it would provide maternity facilities and services, gynaecological services and the full range of clinically appropriate activity that happens in maternity hospitals, as opposed other uses being made of the maternity hospital or of facilities within the hospital. The lease is clear on that as well, that it has to be used as a maternity hospital.

Attempts have been made to conjure up the idea that there is some conspiracy behind the utilisation of that language but there simply is not. Stating that there is does not make it a reality. There simply is not and time will prove this. Time will prove it but if the Deputy does not want to take my word for it, the clinicians in Holles Street are very clear about this. They provide all legally permissible services now, from termination right through. There is no issue in the hospital at the moment and there will be no issue in terms of the new hospital either. That is the reality. This has been debated now for seven years or nine years and it needs to be brought to a conclusion. There are three contracting parties to it, namely, the HSE representing the State, St. Vincent's Holdings and the National Maternity Hospital. There has to be a partnership arrangement on the site because it is a very expansive medical and hospital campus. That is the objective and the rationale is a bone fide, noble one.

See this speech in context