Frances Black (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to speak in favour of the motion. It is a brilliant idea and I have been excited about it ever since I first heard of the campaign when Senator Fitzpatrick invited the 1916 relatives association to Leinster House to promote the proposed naming of the hospital. I welcome the representatives of the 1916 relatives association to the Seanad.

Dedication is an important part of commemoration and by naming places and pieces of infrastructure after prominent people from our past, we can communicate something about who we are and where we have been. The names of many Irish streets and stations portray our complicated post-colonial status. Streets named after aristocrats are intersected by ones named after the revolutionaries who sought to dispose of them. Charlemont Street is an example. It captures something about the essence of the place.

The motion rightly identifies Dr. Lynn as a central early figure in Irish paediatrics. St. Ultan's, the children's hospital she founded with her partner, Madeleine ffrench-Mullen, and other women activists was at the cutting edge of infant healthcare in Ireland. It truly was a lifeline to the women and children of Dublin's tenements. Dr. Lynn and her colleagues had an unshakeable commitment to the poor and to public health. I grew up on Charlemont Street in one of those tenements. I attended St. Ultan's hospital, as did the rest of my family, and, therefore, I feel a personal connection to the life and legacy of Dr. Lynn. I have a real sense of gratitude and admiration for the care she provided to my community.

Dr. Lynn was a key figure in the roll-out of the BCG vaccine that eradicated tuberculosis in Ireland, as others have said. Her influence transformed healthcare in this country, yet it is sad to say she is not a household name when she should be.Naming the new children's hospital after her would help to rectify this injustice. I want to take a little time to speak about her because I think she deserves that.

Dr. Kathleen Lynn was the product of a uniquely radical cross-pollination that swept Ireland in the early 20th century. Irish people, women and workers were getting organised to challenge the oppression they faced. Some particularly perceptive activists like Dr. Lynn saw the connections between these different forms of repression. They forged powerful links between the socialist, feminist and republican movements of the day. This was an innovative and expansive conception of freedom that went far beyond most modest demands for Home Rule or universal suffrage. Radicals like Dr. Lynn wanted to democratise every area of life.

Kathleen Lynn and Madeleine ffrench-Mullen were both combatants in the Irish Citizen Army during the Easter Rising. After the defeat they were incarcerated together in Kilmainham Jail. Dr. Lynn was banished to Britain by the colonial authorities but soon returned to Ireland and climbed the ranks of Sinn Féin, eventually serving a term as an abstentionist TD. Her refusal to accept partitioned political institutions meant, unfortunately, that she was politically marginalised at the end of her life. She died in 1955 in what was a conservative, patriarchal Ireland that looked nothing like the feminist republic she and her comrades had fought for. In Dr. Lynn's life there is a tragic counterfactual. What would Ireland have looked like if women like her were at the centre of the new State, instead of at its margins? When we consider the mother and baby homes it is hard to imagine Dr. Lynn's republic inflicting the same kind of repression and harm on women and children that the theocratic Irish State did and it is hard to imagine her presiding over such great inequality. We will never know but our speculation can inform our political aspirations for contemporary Ireland.

Ireland has been blessed with many admirable, heroic and historically significant people that we can name things after. However, for us there have not been enough women. There have been many important republican women, and they all deserve to be commemorated. For example, Winifred Carney, Helena Molony, Elizabeth O'Farrell and Julia Grennan, to name just a few. The naming of the Rosie Hackett Bridge over the River Liffey in 2014 was an inspired choice. The bridge is located right by Liberty Hall, where Hackett printed the original copies of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, and where she provided over 50 years of service to the Irish trade union movement. I know there is a campaign to name the new pedestrian bridge in Galway city after Julia Morrissey, the Cumann na mBan leader and 1916 veteran. That would be fantastic. I think it is a great idea. Along with the proposal to name the new children's hospital after Dr. Kathleen Lynn, it would help to address the lack of commemoration of republican women.

I commend the 1916 Relatives Association and Senators Fitzpatrick and Ardagh on all their work on the campaign. I also thank the Fianna Fáil group for using their Private Members' time to introduce this motion. It is wonderful and I am deeply grateful. I am so glad it has attracted such broad political support. I hope it is enough to secure the naming of the new children's hospital. Dr. Kathleen Lynn's contribution to Irish society deserves to be remembered and naming the new hospital after her would be a great way to ensure that happens.