Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit and the guests in the Gallery. I welcome this motion. It has been long-standing Sinn Féin policy to name the children's hospital after Dr. Kathleen Lynn. When a motion came before Dublin City Council, it was indicative that only Fine Gael opposed it. The motion passed by 11 votes to four.

As was said in the emails we received, the children's hospital is a public infrastructure project that will ultimately be owned by the people, the citizens of Ireland. That is why there could be no more fitting a name than that of Dr. Kathleen Lynn. Dr. Lynn was a phenomenal woman. She was a pioneer for many reasons, as others have outlined. She has been a hero of mine for years. In fact, I wear a brooch with a picture of her to keep her close to my heart, and I will explain why. It is not just because of the role she played in 1916, when she served as the chief medical officer for the Irish Citizen Army stationed in City Hall or because of her language and social justice activism or her role within the Lockout. Of course, it is because of her role in, and work for, public healthcare. Others have said that she was so affected by the poverty she saw around her as she was growing up that she decided to go into medicine and dedicated her life to improving the health outcomes of women and children in this country, first running a private medical practice from her own home and then after the Rising, setting about establishing St. Ultan's Children's Hospital. It was exceptional in being a female-led hospital. That is fundamental to what an important figure Dr. Lynn was.

St. Ultan's offered essential healthcare to infants and their mothers. My father was one of those infants. My dad was the son of a single mother in the 1940s. As Senator Boyhan said, we cannot but reflect on the previous debate, which was about redress for those who were in the mother and baby homes and how we treat those women. My father, by sheer luck, managed to stay with his mother. He attended St. Ultan's for his BCG vaccine. He went there for regular health check-ups when he was a young child growing up in the flats in Kevin Street. His mother was also able to attend and was given advice about her own health as well as that of her child. There is no doubt but that the advice given to women in St. Ultan's included advice on reproduction because it was a female-led hospital. There would have been advice on all of those things that are so important to women's health. It is no doubt the reason St. Ultan's came to the attention of John Charles McQuaid.

Dr. Lynn, like many of the women revolutionaries in this country, was never given the recognition she deserved. Such women were effectively airbrushed out of history. We now have the portrait of Elizabeth Farrell that puts her back to the front and centre of that occasion during the 1916 Rising. Walking through Dublin city, one could try to find statues of iconic women but would struggle to do so. There are the Anna Livia and Molly Malone statues but we do not have statues dedicated to the women who played a role in the foundation of this State. The renaming of the Rosie Hackett Bridge

was a momentous occasion. As has been said, we are only beginning to acknowledge the women politicians who have come through this House. There are not enough of them but at least we are finally starting to put their faces up on the walls and acknowledge they existed and we exist. Women have played an important role in the history of our State.

It is interesting that we are discussing this issue today. Across societies, people are examining who theirs streets and buildings are named after and what statues are in their squares. The statue of the slave trader Edward Colston was torn down in Bristol. The Trinity College Students' Union has voted to rename the Berkeley Library. It is an interesting point in time. As societies, we are having those conversations about who we value, who we give recognition to and what it represents to society when we name buildings after people and erect statues to them. It is wonderful to see Roger Casement standing proud on Dún Laoghaire pier. He was a phenomenal character and did so much around the rubber plantations. Who a society chooses to recognise says a lot. That is why naming the hospital after Dr. Lynn would be a powerful statement.

We as a country and society have moved on. Dr. Lynn was a feminist, republican and social justice activist. She was a champion of women's health. Let us imagine the message that sends out to the workers, including the cleaners, doctors and nurses, who will go into the hospital every day, and to the parents of the patients. For the people who oppose the hospital being named after Dr. Lynn, their opposition says more about them than it does about those of us who want to value her legacy and recognise her formally by naming the hospital after her.