Bacik: 'Valid concerns' over maternity hospital ownership remain unanswered

The Labour Party leader believes National Maternity Hospital should be built on State-owned land

Labour leader Ivana Bacik: 'If this is to be public ownership in all but name, why not just ensure that the hospital is in public ownership?'.

Labour leader Ivana Bacik denounced the Taoiseach’s comments that concerns over ownership of land where the new National Maternity Hospital is to be built are merely "red herrings".

While mothers and babies are in dire need of a new maternity hospital in Dublin, concerns have been raised about building major State infrastructure for reproductive health on land owned by a Catholic religious order.

“There are still valid concerns that remain around the ownership, the control, and the governance of the hospital that haven’t been fully addressed,” Ms Bacik said.

“The key question for me is if this is to be public ownership in all but name, why not just ensure that the hospital is in public ownership?

"I don’t think they [Government] have pushed hard enough. That’s the reality."

Micheál Martin recently said that the deal struck by Government with the Sisters of Charity amounts to "effective ownership". The State would lease the land where the new maternity hospital is to be built at St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin for 299 years for €10 a year.

However, if the State breaks the terms of its lease, that rent can jump to €850,000 per year while the successor company set up for the Sisters of Charity will still appoint members to the hospital board.

"The successor company to the Sisters of Charity will remain the freehold owner. It will give them the right to nominate three members of the new board and the right to appoint a chairperson every three years," Ms Bacik said.

“We have fought for so long in this country for women’s reproductive rights that all of us are very conscious how this could be rolled back as it is being with the awful news of Roe v Wade in the US [which may revoke the national right to abortion in the US]. 

"So I would be very wary of investing up to €1bn in public money to build a hospital on non-State-owned land.” 

Ms Bacik said that Labour called for a compulsory purchase order on the land five years ago to ensure the hospital remained 100% owned and operated by the State.

"The Government should not rule this out," she said. 

Ms Bacik was speaking in Cork on her first official trip outside Dublin as Labour leader.

She said that her priority as leader is growing support for the Labour party and its values of equality, solidarity, and fairness.

“There’s a really important need now post-Covid for that centre-left voice to be heard more strongly than ever, the voice that Labour has always offered, the social democratic, progressive voice."