Sir, – Tánaiste Leo Varadkar admitted in the Dáil this week that are are “problems” with the plans for the new maternity hospital.
It’s been abundantly clear for the last three years that the deal between the Government and the Sisters of Charity has been deliberately obfuscated by complicated corporate structures to ensure religious control over the new National Maternity Hospital.
If the State is going to spend more than €500 million of taxpayers’ money on a maternity hospital, then it needs to be a publicly owned and independently run maternity hospital, with its own governance structures and board to ensure clinical independence. – Yours, etc,
GRAINNE CONNOR,
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Rathfarnham,
Dublin 16.
Sir, – The present discussions about the proposed new maternity hospital would appear to be getting a bit messy, with the problem being a mixture of freeholds and leaseholds on the same site.
The solution is simple. As there is nothing on the site, existing or proposed, which was not originally provided by the people of Ireland, the various property-owning offices of the church might do the decent thing and return the site, in its entirety, to the people who paid for it in the first place.
Unless the church has become nothing more than an enterprise involved in property deals, that shouldn’t present an insurmountable problem. – Yours, etc,
VINCENT HEARNE,
Chinon,
France.