Rule out the nuns

Society in this Republic is both convulsed and repulsed by the abuse suffered by children at the hands of some religious who were given their opportunity by a State that washed its hands and closed its eyes to its responsibility because many of the children were poor and therefore of little account.

For the Government to continue to wash its hands of its responsibility to society by conferring ownership of the new maternity hospital on the Sisters of Charity if it moves to St Vincent’s Hospital campus is an appalling vista for many in Irish society, regardless of whether or not the nuns will be running the hospital. Tom Cooper, Templeogue, Dublin 6w. …Why not put a compulsory purchase order on the St Vincent’s site, retain it and the new hospital in the ownership of the State and give the use of the hospital to the national maternity hospital in perpetuity?

Tom Burke, Clonsilla, Dublin 15. …The new maternity hospital is badly needed. The site appears to be the best available. The funds are in place. What could go wrong?

Answer: Handing it over to an organisation that was part of the worst scandal in our history. Let’s be clear, various orders of nuns ran hospitals that were clean, efficient and to be proud of. But, the denigration and destruction of mothers’ and babies’ lives on the grounds of a warped sense of religion has destroyed all trust and belief in their having any involvement in the new maternity hospital – or any maternity hospital for that matter.

The argument that they own the site is a fudge. If you or I, ordinary citizens, owned that site, a compulsory purchase order would be served on us without any thought for our ‘ownership’.

It’s time for the HSE, Government and anyone else involved to cop on and stop bowing and scraping to the Church as they did for most of last century.

John Colgan, Fairview, Dublin 3.