Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I, too, thank the Fianna Fáil group and Senators Fitzpatrick, Ardagh and Clifford-Lee for bringing forward this motion. I also thank the 1916 Relatives Association for all its work in campaigning to ensure this fantastic new children's hospital will have the name it deserves. It will ensure we are looking to the past but also establishing our commitment to the future and what the new children's hospital should embody. For some years now, the Labour Party and the trade union movement have been supportive of naming the new children's hospital after Dr. Kathleen Lynn.

I was smiling when Senator Boyhan spoke about the motion last November because at that stage not every party in the House was on board. However, it is fantastic now if that is the case. There should be a speedy move now to try to ensure the hospital is named after Dr. Lynn. One of the striking things about this discussion and debate is that while women played a very important role in the decade before and the decade after the foundation of our State, they have been erased from history. I am thinking of the likes of Delia Larkin, Helena Molony and many others who have been erased from history with their roles glossed over to make way for the primacy of the men who were involved. It is important that the project of ensuring the role of women at the time is recognised and reflected in our public infrastructure. God knows, there is enough State money going into this public infrastructure so it is important to ensure a better balance.

With Dr. Kathleen Lynn it is not just about remembering our history but also looking to how her legacy can inform, shape and drive what the new children's hospital and healthcare for children in the State should look like. It should not be about tokenism which, to be fair, the naming of any building is about. Rather, it is about embodying Dr. Lynn's ideals and her fight for a fairer country, one that should be committed to universal access and should look after the most vulnerable in society. We should seek to embody those ideals in the new hospital in terms of gender equality. We have come far but we still have far to go.

Dr. Kathleen Lynn studied medicine in UCD and graduated in 1899 but she was refused a position in the Adelaide Hospital because of her gender. When she eventually did get a paid position she did enormous work in linking poverty and disease. She saw that the afflictions of the poorest were not just something to be accepted or that the poor should be reliant on charity, but that things could actually be changed. I think of the enormous work she did with the establishment of St. Ultan's Children's Hospital but also the introduction of the BCG vaccination project and resisting State and church control of the activities of the hospital. The establishment of St. Ultan's Children's Hospital was groundbreaking in establishing access for all children in the Dublin area. Today, my colleagues in Dáil tabled a motion on the appalling lack of services for those who have autism in this country and how far behind we are in ensuring that children are cared for in a timely and adequate fashion. There are lessons to be learned from Dr. Lynn's example.

The other key legacy that needs to be recalled with regards to the naming of this hospital is that Dr. Kathleen Lynn lived an unconventional life in those times, with her partnership with Madeline ffrench-Mullen. Ireland in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s was very hostile and cold to any gay person. Senator Black spoke very eloquently about how different the State was when Dr. Lynn was in her elder years compared with the State she fought for in 1916.

Naming the children's hospital should not be an end in itself. Naming it in memory of Dr. Kathleen Lynn should entail a commitment to ensuring that her ideals of equality, democracy, fairness and justice are embodied in how healthcare is delivered in this country, not only in the children's hospital but everywhere in the health sector. I support the motion.I welcome the motion. I spoke on it before but not in support, for a number of reasons. I am familiar with many hospitals: University Hospital Galway and Merlin Park in my area; Castlebar and University Hospital Limerick. None of them is named after men. If we had a history of naming all hospitals after men one could say we should change tack and name a hospital after a woman. However, that is not what this is about.