‘The nuns are gone – the NMH is a partnership’
THE long-awaited new National Maternity Hospital will be approved by Cabinet next Tuesday, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly, has indicated.
It comes as the master of the NMH, Shane Higgins, told the Oireachtas Health Committee
‘We must also deal in facts’
he is ‘alarmed by the combination of emotive misinformation and misunderstanding that prevails’ about the hospital.
Dr Higgins added that some people were trying to make it look like the Church was sneaking in control of the hospital, which he said wasn’t true.
‘Legitimate concerns are welcome and deserve every consideration,’ he said. ‘But we must also deal in facts, and I am alarmed by the combination of emotive misinformation and misunderstanding that prevails.’
Dr Higgins added: ‘Just because the contracts underpinning the new hospital appear complex does not indicate the Church stealing influence over women’s reproductive choices through clever contractual stealth.’
Dr Peter Boylan, former Master of the NMH, told the committee it was time the country ‘stood up for ourselves as a people, face down the Church and say we need that land’. ‘Concern about Catholic ethos is too acute to proceed unless and until there is full scrutiny of all correspondence between Ireland and Rome,’ he said.
Dr Boylan described the phrase ‘clinically appropriate’ in the lease contract as ‘a major red flag’ and said ‘providing healthcare on the basis of this test removes autonomy from women and gives the sole decision-making capacity to doctors’. ‘These words qualify access to services and enshrine justification for refusing legally permissible treatments,’ he said.
Dr Boylan said it is important to clarify whether terminations that have been carried out in St Vincent’s Hospital have taken place under a 2018 law or under older legislation for terminations when a patient’s life was at risk.
It comes as the Health Minister indicated there will be no major changes to the legal arrangements for the hospital. Mr Donnelly told the Dáil yesterday that he did not anticipate any major changes to the legal agreement reached between the Government and the owners of the land on which the hospital will be built. He also said that ‘the building at Holles Street is no longer fit for purpose’.
The NMH is currently located at Holles Street in Dublin city centre in a 130-year-old building.
The Health Minister also said there is ‘no religious influence in this new hospital’.
‘Ireland has a dark history when it comes to the Church and women’s reproductive health. I fully agree with the demand for a fully secular hospital. There will be no religious influence. There can be no religious influence. There is no mechanism for any religious involvement, now or in the future, in the new National Maternity Hospital,’ he said.
Mr Donnelly also told the Dáil: ‘The nuns are gone and we are not handing over our new National Maternity Hospital. This is a partnership between the State, St Vincent’s and the new National Maternity Hospital.’