Row rumbles on…

The people who are out demonstrating about the Sisters of Charity being involved in the running of the new maternity hospital – on the site they gave free to the government at St Vincent’s – are way off the mark.

As in the case of Holles Street at present, it will be run by a nineperson board with no fear or favour for any group.

I would like to put a question: have any of the protesters or their families ever been a patient or attended the out-patients’ unit at St Vincent’s, which is run by the Sisters of Charity? Were they ever refused treatment on religious grounds?

When signing in and giving next-of-kin details, if they stated they were humanist, Muslim, Protestant or anything else, did they not get the same loving care as everyone else?

Is it fair to blame the presentday order for the past failings of the order? I don’t think so.

Tom Mason, Ballybrack, Co. Dublin. …One can only be astounded by the mess created by Simon Harris regarding the new National Maternity Hospital.

At what stage during the secret deal with the Sisters of Charity – whose track record in Magdalene Laundries and residential institutions has seen the taxpayer billed for €1.5bn redress costs – did Simon think that this would be a good idea? Then we have the bishop stamping Catholic all over the debate. Are some of the hierarchy still deluded enough to think they are living in the age of Dev and John Charles McQuaid?

We are a multicultural, multidenominational society. It’s time we behaved like one. Let’s get the grubby hands of religious orders off our medical institutions and start behaving like the civilised society we profess to be.

Minister Harris should not accept secret deals with religious orders who have a track record of neglect and profiteering from children. You are not empowered to hand them control of our National Maternity Hospital.

Gerard Corrigan, …The last thing any hospital needs in this country is the involvement, connection or ethos of any religious organisation due to the appalling history of obscene physical and sexual abuse, mass graves and the way very few who were involved in these practices were ever brought to justice of any kind. What an abhorrent thought.

Vincent O’Connell,