Ivana Bacik (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I thank her for coming in, on foot of a request I made last week to the leader of the Seanad, to have this important debate. I ask her to relay our concerns back to the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, as I know she will. This has been a long saga. We have seen many years of obfuscation, Byzantine legal deliberations and much lack of clarity. Nobody denies the need for a new maternity hospital and we are all agreed it should be co-located with an adult acute service. That is something we are agreed on. However, valid and serious concerns remain about the ownership and clinical independence of the proposed new maternity hospital.

It boils down to this, after many years of discussion and debate, without State ownership of the land on which the new hospital is to be built, valid and serious concerns will remain in terms of clinical independence. I pay tribute to Dr. Peter Boylan who has been making this point for some time now. His concerns are being borne out and he is being vindicated. The Government has accepted this because we have heard the Taoiseach saying when the State is investing, the State should own. We saw an all-party consensus emerging in the Dáil last week, in the motion of 23 June. The key question we must all ask is what the Government has done since last week to move ahead on the motion to ensure this hospital will be built on Stated-owned land.

There are so many concerns about the structures which have been devised. We have to step back and remember the discussion and negotiations commenced well before our laws changed in 2018, to enable the provision of legal abortion in Ireland. As somebody who campaigned for many years - indeed decades - to see repeal of the eighth amendment, I am glad our laws have moved into the 21st century and women can now access the reproductive healthcare we need in this State. Unfortunately, that moving forward of laws has not been reflected in the negotiations on the new maternity hospital and especially on the structures around what we may call this Catholic successor company, into which ownership will pass, the St. Vincent's holding company.

I have spoken about this before. We know we have a legacy issue in this State whereby 90% of our schools being State-run and State-maintained in that the State pays teachers' salaries and building maintenance, but the land on which the schools are built and sited remains owned by religious orders or church authorities, and in a large part by the Catholic Church. I have called a syndrome, which we have seen emerging in recent years, a "developer's wife syndrome" in that we have seen the orders divesting ownership into what we may call a Catholic successor company, in the same way a male developer will often divest assets to his spouse in order to free himself of asset ownership. The liability is attached to him but he owns no assets. The partner or spouse has the asset ownership but no liabilities.

We have seen this used to serious effect by religious bodies in the past, especially the Christian Brothers divesting ownership of schools to the Edmund Rice Schools Trust. It is an ostensibly lay company but is, in fact, a Catholic successor company. I have been involved in a school divestment in which we saw this happen and we have seen endless difficulties with a lease arrangement in this context. That is what I fear about the structure the State is proposing. A 99- or even 149-year lease is a short-term lease in the eyes of the Vatican and the church authorities. The church takes a long view. I am quoting from Government people who have talked to me about this.

I attended the Oireachtas briefing with the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, two weeks ago, when we were told by officials that attempts had been made by the State to transfer the land into State ownership. The question, asked just now by a Government Senator, remains: why will the St. Vincent's holding group not simply gift the land to the State? Why is it so anxious to retain ownership? We have multiple examples of other hospitals, such as St. James's Hospital, in which we see different owners of the land. There is no requirement that it be owned by the same entity. There are five separate entities on the site of St. James's.

We must ask that question and without a sufficient answer, we are lacking the necessary assurances about clinical independence and protection of this State investment of €800 million. We no longer, in a 21st century republic, have to accept that religious entities continue to own land in which the State is investing large sums of money. We have moved on. I have sought freedom of information requests from the HSE and the Department of Health to see what attempts have been made to buy the land. We certainly do not need a constitutional amendment. We have a compulsory purchase order procedure and that should be used.

What has happened with the business case of the national maternity hospital, apparently submitted to Government and rejected? Different answers have been given. I would like clarity on that. We have no clarity as to whether abortions have been carried out at St. Vincent's Hospital. There is a serious concern when we see a Catholic religious order divesting itself of healthcare holdings into a successor company, that this is not a secular successor company and will not have the clinical independence we require as women living in a 21st century republic.