Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The shared island we stand for is a secular and socialist island. An essential point of that is no involvement of the church in terms of healthcare and education. That is a very basic thing yet the Government signed an agreement and lease with St. Vincent's Healthcare Group, where the first line of the constitution literally is about the mission of Mary Aikenhead, who was the founder of the Sisters of Charity, which was responsible for the running of the Magdalen laundries, thereby completely contradicting that idea.

The Taoiseach was very coy earlier in response to Deputy McDonald about how he will vote tonight on a motion that goes exactly against what the Government did. The motion from Sinn Féin, which we support, states that it should be a public maternity hospital on public land and so on. The Government did the opposite of that yesterday. What is the Government position? How will the Taoiseach be voting tonight?

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