Principles leave no room for fudges and no scope for ‘cutting deals’ at St Vincent’s
THE ongoing controversy over the proposed relocation of the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) to the St Vincent’s Hospital campus has acted like a lightning conductor for much of what’s dysfunctional in Ireland today.
The proposal was not thought through. In any event, it has been overtaken by pressures in Government, via the Citizens’ Assembly, to legislate for nonmedical abortion which will, as most commentators recognise, mean abortion on demand.
There is a chasm between the ethos of the Sisters of Charity, which developed St Vincent’s into a world-class hospital, and an increasingly strident secular politics. One that apparently cannot, or refuses to, see that it is the State itself rather than the Sisters of Charity, which has failed to deliver adequate maternity care for women. Paul Simon’s Al (‘Call me Al’) spoke for all of us when he said: “I need a shot of redemption...”.
Politicians do, bankers do, and so do the very small number of nuns who should perhaps have walked a different road. The overwhelming number did good to the very best of their ability. They left us an example of compassion and professionalism: the fruit of late nights, early mornings and unbelievable dedication.
Regardless of all the recent proposals to separate this and separate that in terms of governance and boards, the bottom line is this: the Sisters of Charity is committed, by its convictions and its constitution, to upholding the value of human life, which is at the heart of the Hippocratic Oath. It’s what brought these women into a vocational – rather than a contractual – mission of healthcare. It is wholly at odds with Ireland’s new secular politics, shaped by an ideology of ‘choice’ in which the right to life, set out in Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), is made contingent: it opens up a scenario in which an infant lives or dies, depending essentially on ‘choice’.
Politics in Ireland these days is full of compromise and ‘cutting deals’. That is simply not going to work in this instance – and that is a good thing. Some principles are far too important to fudge. Worse, in this instance they are a recipe for a bitter and divisive dispute. This would distract from the imperative of developing a modern maternity hospital for mothers and infants. It would also deflect from the Government’s appalling track record of under-investment in capacity-building within the public health system, as well as its failure to ensure proper staffing levels in medicine, nursing and, importantly, in midwifery.
The Sisters of Charity has been subject to all kinds of inaccurate – and deeply wounding – criticisms. Stale and discredited allegations about the Bon Secours have been conflated with uninformed criticisms about work and mission.
Then there’s been patronising guff suggesting ‘the nuns’ (aka highly qualified women with a track-record of innovation) were great little women in their time but that they are now standing in the way of 21st century care for women – such nonsense. It’s ironic that an ideology that preaches ‘choice’, ‘inclusion’ and ‘pluralism’ should be so implacably imposed to a different, much older and vocational model of medical care for women and infants – founded precisely by women, moved by the plight of the poor with no access to proper maternity and other inpatient care, and who were innovating in Ireland and abroad long before the time of Florence Nightingale.
The Sisters of Charity, having reflected on this irreconcilable clash of cultures and on the visceral and ill-informed invective to which it has been subject, should witness to the values by which it has served Ireland for 200 years and withdraw from the proposed arrangement.
The great English economist John Maynard Keynes, when criticised for changing his mind on one occasion, retorted: “When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” Government does it all the time, especially after elections – and even more especially in the case of healthcare. There is an enormous litany of such changes – need one mention the National Children’s Hospital?
The notion that the NMH will be ‘separate’ from St Vincent’s displays a naïve lack of awareness of the dynamics of different organisational cultures operating within ‘one space’. Where there is a clash – and there most certainly is a clash in this instance – the dominant culture will prevail and will ‘capture’ what is, in effect, a ‘joint entity’. It is extraordinary that this reality should not have been addressed at an early stage in the discussions and that the implications for both institutions – and for the wider institutional arrangements within which they operate – were not reflected upon and addressed.
In these circumstances, a better
A better option is to develop the new NMH at RTÉ’s Montrose site
option is to develop a new NMH on the RTÉ Montrose site, just down the road from St Vincent’s. Jimmy Sheehan, the distinguished surgeon who co-founded the Blackrock Clinic and also the Galway Clinic, has pointed out that the Montrose site is larger and has scope for expansion. It also removes the need for the demolition of buildings which would otherwise arise on the St Vincent’s site. It would be less complicated and less vulnerable to delays of one kind or another.
The whole debacle holds up a mirror to a divided Ireland in which national values, rooted in our history, traditions and identity, are under pressure from a secular consumerist polis that takes its politics from globalisation, its values from social media and controls a politics that brooks no opposition in its deference to the cultural opinions of the multinational elite.
This divide between the sacred and the secular is evident across the wider EU – indeed, nowhere is the collapse of secular socialism more evident than in France. It all points to an aching lack of understanding around what life is all about in contemporary society – and that includes life in our National Maternity Hospital.
As to the religious nursing orders having no place in a ‘pluralist Ireland’, it’s interesting to reflect that the most ‘pluralist’ of all organisations is the Catholic Church. Its mandate is a global one and its mission embraces all of humanity, especially those living in poverty and oppression in anonymous parts of the world. Check out the clinics and ‘hospitals’ there and you’ll most likely find nuns – women who had options and chose the vocational option of solidarity with the poor – with women and infants.
This whole episode should never have happened. Now that it has, the least bad option is to acknowledge the fundamental difference in the life principles of the Sisters of Charity and Ireland’s new selfprofessed secular health system – and move on from there.