Hand over Church-run hospitals, says Martin
ANY property interests retained by the Catholic Church in hospitals – such as the Mater and St Vincent’s in Dublin – should be handed over to the State, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said yesterday.
Mr Martin said the State has already invested heavily in these hospitals and is essentially running them. He said ethical committees owe more to medicine than religious ethos.
‘In my view, any area in education or health, where fundamentally the State has made a large investment and continued to make the investment for over 30 or 40 years, when that comes to an end – the utilisation of that facility for those purposes – I think those facilities should then revert to the State,’ Mr Martin said.
While in government in 2002, Fianna Fáil reached agreement with 18 religious orders, under which the orders agreed to hand over €128million in cash and property. In return, the State said it would indemnify the orders from legal actions taken by former residents of religious institutions.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Today With Seán O’Rourke, Mr Martin said the revelations of a mass baby grave at the Tuam mother and baby home spoke to a dark side of our history where we had an invasive church governing families.
‘There has to be the inquiry [commission of investigation], but I think also, there has to be a proper forum for families where we can transparently have the story told, articulated.
‘First of all, so that, at this very late stage, families and victims of this regime can get opportunities to articulate their needs and concerns and to guide current day society in terms of responding to those needs,’ he said.
Meanwhile both President Michael D Higgins and Taoiseach Enda Kenny have praised the work of historian Catherine Corless whose research, first revealed by the Irish Mail on Sunday, helped reveal the existence of the mass grave.
In a speech to mark International Women’s Day at Áras an Uachtaráin, the president said: ‘May I commend the work of Catherine Corless, and others, who have continued to ask the questions that are important if we are to face the truth of what prevailed… I hope the commission of inquiry will serve to put the truth on the record.’
Meanwhile, Mr Kenny described Ms Corless as a ‘heroine’ in the Dáil. At one point, Mr Kenny became involved in a confrontation with Catherine Connolly, Independent TD for Galway West, following his comments on Tuesday that ‘no nuns broke into our homes to kidnap our children. We gave them up to what we convinced ourselves was the nuns’ care’. In addition, Ms Connolly asked why an interim report from the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes – which was given to the Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone in September – is still unpublished.
‘What is in it that is so frightening? What is in it that prevents it from being published?’ Ms Connolly asked.
‘On the Taoiseach’s reference to our shameful past, who made it shameful to have what was natural, namely a pregnancy and a baby? Who instituted that those babies were taken, not directly by the nuns in the middle of the night, but as the result of a visit from a priest or somebody else doing their job? Please do not insult the women of Ireland on International Women’s Day.’
Mr Kenny said that, far from insulting the women of Ireland, he wanted to find answers.
He said: ‘I have not read the interim report. The Minister for Children Katherine Zappone has. I’m quite sure she’s in consultation with people about this. I see no reason the report cannot be published... It may have to be in some redacted form. I do not know because I have not seen it or read it.’ Ms Zappone would answer to that, he added.
‘There has to be a forum for families’ ‘I have not read the interim report’