Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I support Senator Gavan's comments on Palestine and the really disgraceful changes in categorising groups as terrorist organisations. It is dreadful.

Not so long ago I was outside Leinster House with activists and other campaigners commemorating the senseless and tragic loss of life of Savita Halappanavar that was caused by Ireland's restrictive abortion laws at the time and fears of legal responsibility. We gathered to say "Never again".

Outside Leinster House there was "Our Maternity Hospital" campaign, which is the campaign against church ownership of women's healthcare, and they co-ordinated the call, as they have done for a number of years now, to make our national maternity hospital fully publicly owned and built on fully State-owned land. We in the Labour Party agree with the aims of the national maternity hospital campaign. We believe that the national maternity hospital needs to be a fully publicly-owned hospital built on publicly-owned land. We believe the Government must do everything in its power to ensure a fully publicly-owned hospital built on fully publicly-owned land, which is actually quite a mouthful to say. This includes being willing to compulsorily purchase the land on which the proposed hospital is to be built.

We repealed the eighth amendment, which was only half the battle. Without ready access to abortion and other services, that repeal will mean very little. With the new maternity hospital costing the State at least €350 million, and set to be built on land owned by the Sisters of Charity and run by a board appointed by them, the promised access will be compromised. I fail to see how it cannot be.

The Labour Party supports the campaign. We believe there should be no reliance on charity in the provision of healthcare. I raise this issue here again today because there continues to be a concern about the influence of religious ethos on this hospital. Healthcare should be informed by best medical practice and not by religious ethos. I implore Government Senators to take these concerns seriously and to raise them with their party colleagues.