Seanad debates

Thursday, 19 May 2022

An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business

 

10:30 am

Photo of Rónán MullenRónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

When one looks at debates in Britain on Brexit and the protocol, and the behaviour of the British Government around those things, or the behaviour of leading politicians during lockdown and the ongoing craziness in the United States around many issues, we in Ireland might be tempted to think that somehow we have a more objective way of doing politics and looking at issues of public controversy, but I do not think that is true at all. If we look at the debate on the national maternity hospital, the amount of fake news to which we have been subjected for so long now is hard to believe. It has been clear to me for a long time, and it is the only sane read of the situation, that the Sisters of Charity lost any power to influence future events at the hospital a long time ago. The Government will get its abortions and these will happen in an institution called after St. Vincent. That is a scandalous and painful situation not just for Christians but other people who saw and valued the tradition of church-run hospitals as places that provided high-quality, ethical healthcare that protected everybody equally.

I do not understand why there has been no scrutiny of how and why it was allowed to happen that the nuns gave away or lost their capacity to protect their ethos. I do not understand why there is no debate about the lack of ethical diversity now planned for our maternity hospital system. If somebody wants to have a baby in a hospital that does not deliberately end unborn children's lives, why should that not be available to that person? A third of the voting population voted for healthcare that protects mothers and babies equally. Are they entitled to no representation or presence in our system? Why is there no scrutiny of the arguments coming from critics of the Government's arrangements?

I wondered in these days whether it suited people to foment controversy about the contribution of religious institutions and personnel to Irish social life. It is too easy to cover that conflict without asking any hard questions about abortion and the lack of mandated pain relief during late-term abortions and so on. I wonder why it is okay to trash faith-based hospitals, given their impressive record compared with other institutions, all things considered. The disaster of a wrongly diagnosed unborn child being aborted at Holles Street would not have happened in a Catholic hospital. People should reflect on that. We need ethical diversity at the very least. A referendum does not change that.

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