New hospital must be totally independent

THE need for an understanding that the new national maternity hospital built to be built on a site at St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin is totally independent was highlighted in the Dáil by the labour Party leader Howlin.

‘We need to have this clearly expressed now and doubly so in the context of the utterances of a senior church person which urged Catholics to break the law or, at least, to not comply with laws that run contrary to church teaching,’ he said.

‘This is a worrying development in the context of a new national maternity hospital. I ask the Taoiseach to state that the intention of the Government, and of this House, is that the national maternity hospital will fully comply with every aspect of the law, its governance will be secular, and whatever legal means are required to achieve that will be pursued.’

In reply, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the Government will be investing hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money in this new hospital and it will not be gifted to anybody.

‘The entire investment will be protected by the State,’ he said.

‘The hospital will be independent of St. Vincent’s and will have its own governance, board and staff, but there will have to be a degree of integration because that is the point of co-location in the first place. Regarding what laws will apply, they will be the laws enacted by the Oireachtas, not Canon law or any other law.’