Controversy over the private ownership and control of the new National Maternity Hospital has been reignited following the briefing given by the Campaign Against Church Ownership of Women’s Healthcare to Oireachtas members, which was hosted by Deputy Roisin Shortall on April 26.
The cost of the new build is set to overrun by a multiple of the original cost, estimated at €150m in 2013. Taxpayers cannot be asked to pay for a new maternity hospital which is to be forever owned and ethically controlled by the Catholic Church.
Yet, preposterously, this is what the Government proposes.
Some of the assurances given by the Religious Sisters of Charity in 2017 have turned out to be misleading.
They still own their lands and their hospitals. As sole shareholders of St Vincent’s Healthcare Group, they continue to appoint board members.
It is with them or their representatives that the State is cobbling together a deal.
This deal involves the National Maternity Hospital at Holles Street, itself a private Catholic corporation under the Dublin Archdioceses.
The hospital has agreed to place itself, in effect, under congregational rule.
The main object of the nuns’ new holding company, which will own Vincent’s hospitals, is to provide healthcare which is ethically compliant (constitution of St Vincent’s Holdings, para 3).
Whose ethos is to govern the hospitals is clear: company directors are legally bound to uphold the congregational values of Mary Aikenhead (para 4.6).
These have been codified by the nuns into legally enforceable instruments of compliance.
A job description for nurses at St Vincent’s University Hospital Hospital published in 2019 specifies that adherence to the hospital’s ‘codes of ethical practice’ is a condition of employment (page 5). Such terms are provided for in para 5.8 of the holding company’s constitution.
There is an even more intractable issue. The nuns, who own the land on which the new hospital is to be built, are governed by canon law.
Under canon law, congregational land is held by the Church in perpetuity. The Religious Sisters of Charity plan to lease the land on which the Government is to build, leaving the State as tenant.
One of the conditions of the lease is that the State must licence a new company which will be owned and controlled by the nuns’ companies to run the maternity hospital. Para 5.11 of the constitution of the holding company envisages just such a possibility.
This new company will be known as the ‘National Maternity Hospital at Elm Park’. It will be owned by the nuns’ holding company and managed, overall, by the nuns’ management company, St Vincent’s Healthcare Group.
The State cannot continue to rubber-stamp the deal reached between these two private Catholic companies.
Where is the public interest? Private entities cannot be compelled, legally, to offer services that conflict with their ethos.
Contraception, IVF, and intentional sterilisations have never been carried out in the nuns’ hospitals.
Post repeal of the Eighth Amendment, the idea that the new €1bn maternity hospital would refuse to carry out procedures banned by Rome is unthinkable.
Only public ownership and control of the new maternity hospital can guarantee comprehensive, secular healthcare. Nothing less is acceptable in 2021.
Jo Tully
Campaign Against Church Ownership of Women’s Healthcare
Clontarf
Dublin 3
Government back up big businesses
Allowing the sale of people’s mortgages to the vulture funds was the most disgraceful and disgusting act of the Fine Gael government.
The mortgage holders were willing to pay more than the vulture funds but the CEO of the bank said they refuse to do debt forgiveness in the most cold-hearted speech to the government committee.
These Fine Gael politicians have made it clear they will put big business over the people of Ireland every time.
It’s high time donations and favours to politicians are investigated by An Garda Síochána.
Nothing has changed in this country; we cannot trust our leaders.
I suggest we make ownership of property by foreign interests almost impossible by taxing them so much it’s not worth it.
The homeless situation has happened because of the policies of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.
Ireland is being bought up by greedy big business and the people are being treated like they don’t matter at all.
John Adams
Cobh
Co Cork
Keep stamp cost low for December
From May 27, the price of a postage stamp in Ireland increases from €1 to €1.10 and the cost of posting a letter to Britain and the rest of the World rises sharply by 30c from €1.70 to €2.
While acknowledging, but not totally accepting, the reasons given by An Post for these increases, I wish to make one early appeal to the State-owned company.
Please make the cost of a stamp for letters and cards to Britain €1.10, the same as for Ireland, for the month of December.
Keeping in touch with relatives and friends ‘across the water’ is so much more meaningful by a card with a greeting, a letter or photos compared with that of an email or other messages on social media.
However, many people living in Ireland, who have relatives and friends in Britain, will find the €2 cost of posting a Christmas card in 2021 prohibitive at possibly the only time in a year they are in touch.
For An Post to price letters to Britain at the ‘national rate’ from December 1 to 31 every year would, I contend be a good marketing exercise that would serve to generate additional business.
I would urge An Post to give its customers some early Christmas cheer.
Leo McMahon
Carrigaline
Co Cork
Turkey’s Istanbul Convention pull out
At a time when many countries are trying to find ways of combating violence against women, news came that Turkey is planning to pull out of the Istanbul Convention, the landmark treaty on combating violence and domestic violence against women.
The announcement in March sparked massive protests in Turkey 10 years after Turkey signed up to the convention [in May 2011].
Women around the world are calling on president Erdoğan to reverse the decision which will put the safety — and even the lives — of millions of women and girls at risk.
Their voices have been strengthened by strong condemnation of the decision to withdraw from world leaders including US president Joe Biden and European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.
Turkey’s withdrawal comes at time when Covid-19 lockdowns have led to a spike in reports of violence with many women and girls trapped at home with their abusers or unable to easily access safety.
The withdrawal is just the tip of a dangerous populist iceberg which uses backward-looking misrepresentations of “family values” to roll back rights across Europe.
As German MEP Terry Reintke said recently: “Autocrats are afraid of free and independent women. They’re afraid of societies where women can freely decide over their bodies and lives. They’re afraid of the strength of women’s and LGBTI movements. That’s why they hate the Istanbul Convention”.
Turkey’s withdrawal will only come into force on July 1, so we still have time to get president Erdoğan to reconsider this dangerous decision.
Stefan Simanowitz
Willow Road
London
Irish will have no stake in their future
I am Irish and I’m following this story of vulture funds from Brussels, where I live, with shock and despair for people who are shut out of housing ownership.
The housing situation is so different here; two years ago my 28-year-old son was able to buy an apartment in Brussels of 80sq m in a decent well-run building, due to conditions which seem impossible in Ireland — 100% loan at a rate below 2% (interest rates are consistently higher in Ireland); an affordable price (€169,000).
Responsibility lies with successive Irish governments, and the EU can’t be blamed. In the 2020 general election, Sinn Féin, which campaigned on housing and health, was shut out of government despite winning the popular vote.
The problem of housing clearly identified by that popular vote has not been taken seriously by the current government, which is failing in its duty towards Irish citizens, is facilitating parasitic monopolies by vulture funds, and turning Ireland into a wasteland, where citizens have no stake in their communities and futures.
Dorothy Morrissey
Brussels
Belgium
Students missing out on Irish colleges
Having enjoyed summers in Irish colleges, especially Ventry, their temporary closure is disappointing and a huge cultural loss for two generations of students.
For city slickers like myself (or so I thought) experiencing everything other than learning Irish was very important.
I managed to fail the fáinne airgid every time which is probably a record but the seven and six postal order from my poor mother went towards our midnight feasts.
Unfortunately, it’s something you can only enjoy once.
Michael Foley
Rathmines
Dublin
