Maire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Fáilte arís, an tAire Stait. This matter relates to the proposed new facility for the National Maternity Hospital and the lack of progress in recent years on its governance and ownership. I am asking for clarity regarding who will own the hospital or have influence and control over it. There is a lack of clarity and transparency about that, a tactic used frequently by the religious organisation that owns the land on which the new facility is being built. The National Maternity Hospital is being built by the State, so we will probably own the bricks. The project will cost at least €350 million and the facility will then be handed over to the Sisters of Charity order, which is a subsidiary of St. Vincent's Healthcare Group - a major shareholder in the project. The assurances from the religious order that it is giving up ownership of its hospitals or removing itself from the boards, and that it will not dictate the parameters of healthcare given two women in these hospitals, are not adequate. It is our National Maternity Hospital, it is not the religious order's hospital. We can go through the legacy of cruelty and torture by the religious orders, in collusion with this State, of women and children, and we will not take that any more. We have an opportunity to provide what the Sláintecare's report recommends, namely, universal healthcare without interference from private or vested interests or religious interests.

The ethos of the nuns disallows in vitrofertilisation, IVF, gender reassignment, abortion and other necessary procedures. They took the Minister, who asked the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, to inquire into the death of a 34 year old patient from an ectopic pregnancy, to court and won. HIQA is not allowed investigate that death. Despite all the reassurances from the religious orders, women do not believe them. We had the Uplift petition which yielded almost 120,000 signatures. Dr. Peter Boylan, a former master of the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, resigned saying he never thought this would happen again following the referendum. The Master of the Coombe Hospital resigned in the same vein. Fergus Finlay of Barnardos was aghast at what happened in this case. Women need to believe that they will be cared for and not judged, like Savita Halappanavar, on the basis of the religious ethos in a hospital. That needs to be gone from our healthcare system. We have had enough of that.