Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Sometimes it can feel like Groundhog Day in Ireland because every time we take a leap forward and become a more open and progressive society for our people, and especially our women, we seem to get dragged back to an Ireland of the past. That is what it feels like to stand here and have to make the case for why the national maternity hospital must be publicly owned and, more important, publicly controlled. If we do not learn from our past then we will repeat its mistakes. Nobody is denying that the church in Ireland has played a significant role in providing education and healthcare to many when the State did not, but we also have to recognise that it played a significant role in stymying the provision of care and maintaining control of the type of care provided.

St. Ultan’s hospital was a child-centred hospital that catered for women and children and was run by multi-denominational, independent women who recognised the impact of poverty on health. My own father, who was reared by a single mother in the 1940s, was a patient of St. Ultan’s and benefited from its foresight. When proposals were put forward to expand the hospital and amalgamate it with the national children’s hospital, there were echoes of what we are seeing with the national maternity hospital today. Archbishop Byrne opposed such a merger solely on the grounds of religion. To quote him, "The danger of naturalistic and wrong teachings on sex instruction or adolescent problems is a powerful argument for retaining the custody of children in Catholic hands." The power of the Catholic church in the Irish Free State was such that the proposed merger of the two hospitals never took place. Instead, the Catholic church placed the faith of Catholic children over their health, and it was another 20 years before we got a new children's hospital.

Likewise, when it comes to the influence of the church on maternity care in Ireland, my own mother had first-hand experience of it when she gave birth to my brother in the 1960s. My brother died in childbirth and my mother never got to see him. The nuns took him away and immediately buried him in an unmarked grave in Glasnevin. She was simply told to go home and try again. My mother never got over the loss of my brother and the cruel manner in which the nuns treated her. An unbaptised child was not deemed worthy of mourning or a proper burial. In fact, it was not until the 1990s that the State recognised the existence of children like my brother.

People will argue that times have changed and that we have moved on but have we really? Look at the mother and baby institutions and how we are still treating the survivors today. Women deserve so much better than the assurances we are being given by the Government that they will be able to access all services, including future services that will be legal in this State, in our national maternity hospital. Women deserve cast-iron guarantees. For too long, women's health has been at the back of the queue and even today, after repealing the eighth amendment, only half of our maternity hospitals and one in ten GPs offer abortion services.

If the Sisters of Charity are sincere in their offer to gift the land for the national maternity hospital to the State, then it has to be just that - a gift, with no strings attached. There should be no subsidiary boards. It must be a full transfer of ownership. People say that the nuns are gone. Yes, the nuns might be gone but the Catholic vested interests are still there. They are still controlling think tanks in this country that get on the airwaves every day and dictate about women's healthcare. Nobody wants to delay the delivery of first-class maternity care to women in Ireland but if we have learned one thing from past experiences of church and medical care in this country, it is that at the core of the church's role in medical care is control. It always has been and it always will be. That is why the women of Ireland deserve a national maternity hospital that is publicly owned and publicly controlled.