Dáil Debate | National Maternity Services: Motion [Private Members]

 

Earlier today, on behalf of the Labour Party, I expressed our strong disappointment to the Taoiseach at the decision that has been taken by Cabinet. As I have said and as my colleague, Deputy Duncan Smith, has said, in Labour we continue to stand firm in expressing our strong concerns about ongoing issues with the control, ownership and governance of the new national maternity hospital. We thank the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, for the engagement we have had in the last two weeks and we acknowledge the need for a new national maternity hospital to be built to provide women with the healthcare we so badly need. We are disappointed that the engagement and two-week delay did not lead to any change or substantive improvement in the deal that was on offer and we should have learned by now that there is a need to get this right because we have such a long legacy in Ireland of church and State interference in the exercise of women's right to reproductive healthcare. Many of us fought for decades to see the eighth amendment repealed and when we finally achieved that in 2018, only four years ago, we were able to introduce legal abortion in Ireland.

We know from experience, our own bitter experience and experience elsewhere, that these hard-won gains for women's rights and women's reproductive rights can be reversed or undermined all too easily. Indeed, we have seen that clearly in recent weeks with the awful prospect that the pro-choice landmark Roe v. Wade decision could now be overruled by the US Supreme Court. A whole new generation of women in America face the prospect of fighting again for pro-choice rights that were won there decades ago and may now be overturned.

Apart from that real and valid fear that we have about the reversal of rights won, we also have the principle of putting €1 billion of State money into a facility that will not be constructed on State-owned land. Ireland has a long legacy of investing public money into building up the infrastructure of voluntary hospitals and schools on sites that are owned by religious orders or their proxies or successor companies. I have spoken before in this House about the well-established practice where religious orders divest their assets from their own ownership and into the ownership of lay-run trusts, which can often have a more hard-line approach to negotiation with the State than the religious orders which preceded them. That is the context in which we distrust this deal. That is the context for ongoing concerns. That is the context for our real and pressing need to see this national maternity hospital built on publicly owned land.

The two-week delay has not resolved our concerns. Indeed, our engagement has strengthened our resolve that the Government should have retained the leverage power of the compulsory purchase order, CPO. I spoke today with the Taoiseach about figures I just got from An Bord Pleanála about the length of time it takes to resolve a CPO. The average number of weeks this year to dispose CPO cases is 20.4 weeks, less than five months. In a context where we have now waited nine years and we have undoubtedly seen incremental improvements in the deal on offer, the State has removed from itself the option of a CPO and therefore has removed that bargaining power.

The Government has now taken this less-than-optimal deal, the imperfect deal, as Deputy Duncan Smith said. We know it is less than optimal and less than perfect because we know from what the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, and others have said that the Government wanted the site to be in public ownership. At least one Minister for Health sought the Attorney General's advice on the merits of a CPO. However, that was not pursued and instead the Government settled for this less-than-optimal deal. As a result, we are letting down women in Ireland and we are letting down the principle of church-State separation.

We have got conditional ownership. It is ownership of a sort but it is not outright ownership, not freehold ownership. It is leasehold interest and however long a leasehold is, it remains conditional ownership. The conditions are clearly set out in the legal documents: the conditionality of appointment of three directors; the right to appoint three directors from St. Vincent's Healthcare Group; the right to have a rotating chair every three years; the right to have a penalty rent; and the phrase that so many of us have picked up on and are concerned about of "clinically appropriate" which clearly qualifies the availability of all legally permissible services.

These are the conditions consequent on the leasehold arrangement and these are the reasons why we continue to have such valid, solid and substantial concerns about the deal that has been done. That is why at this very late stage we are still calling on the Government to go back and seek a better deal, as has been done before. This is a better deal than was previously on the table from St. Vincent's Healthcare Group, so it can be improved upon. If the Government were to go back to the St. Vincent's Healthcare Group there would be a united Opposition who all want to see this hospital built on publicly owned land in the interests of women's reproductive healthcare.