Government urged to buy land for National Maternity Hospital

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly is set to meet the St Vincent's Hospital Group and the Sisters of Charity to discuss buying the land on which the new hospital will be built in Dublin. Picture:Gareth Chaney/Collins

The opposition has called on the Government to purchase the land for the National Maternity Hospital as soon as possible.

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly is set to meet the St Vincent's Hospital Group and the Sisters of Charity to discuss buying the land on which the new hospital will be built in Dublin.

The Social Democrats will table a motion this week calling for the new maternity hospital to be fully publicly owned.

The Government has confirmed it will not object to the motion, with all coalition leaders in agreement that the hospital and the land it sits on should belong to the State.

Protestors from the Repeal the Eighth movement outside Leinster House last month, urging the Health Minister to ensure the National Maternity Hospital will be fully secular. Picture: Sasko Lazarov  

Róisín Shortall, co-leader of the Social Democrats, said the Government must "go further and we want to ensure that this isn't just an empty promise, we want them to start taking action on this".

"It's essential that if the new facility is to be fully publicly owned and governed that the site on which it is built is fully publicly owned," she said.

"The second is that the proposal as it stands at the moment is that the National Maternity Hospital Company would be a wholly-owned subsidiary of St Vincent's. And that's not acceptable, I think, on any level, because that gives control over the hospital, and also control over what happens within the hospital.

We're saying that the Government now needs to take the message of repeal and take the views of modern Ireland and move to a separation of Church and State."

Ms Shortall rejects the notion that the Catholic ethos of the charity would not be taken into account if it were to remain in its hands, adding "there is no hospital that we're aware of anywhere in the world that is Catholic-owned, and provides the full range of Women's Health Care services".

Compulsory purchase order

Likewise, the Labour Party and People Before Profit have called on the Government to launch a compulsory purchase order to take the land into state hands, if a bid to buy the land fails.

People Before Profit TD Brid Smith said: "We do really welcome the fact that the Government is to try to buy it from them.

"Should that not happen, we believe that should be CPO'ed because this is one opportunity to break from the old inappropriate way of doing health and education in this country, which is partially run by the State and almost wholly run by the Catholic Church.

"We're looking forward to the State securing the land 100% from the nuns and that will automatically give them control of the board of directors and everything, all the other governance issues, and it is the only solution."

A protest is planned on June 26 in which activists will call for the Church to be removed from having any say or ownership in the new hospital.