Sinn Féin to call for National Maternity Hospital’s independence

Sinn Féin will call on the Government to ensure the new National Maternity Hospital (NMH) has "legally-guaranteed independence" from all non-medical influence when the Dáil returns next week.

The party’s spokeswoman on health, Louise O’Reilly, has published a private members’ business motion on the governance of the new hospital.

The motion will be debated in the Dáil on Wednesday.

Describing conditions at the maternity hospital’s current Holles Street site in Dublin as “deplorable”, she said the new NMH should be built on the St Vincent’s University Hospital campus as quickly as possible.

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“We want the Government to bring forward legislation to legally guarantee the independence of the National Maternity Hospital . . . the Government have to lock in legally the independence of the new hospital and get it built quickly.

"There is a clear appetite among the public for a cessation of the involvement of the Catholic Church, or indeed any religious ethos, in healthcare, but most especially in the provision of maternity services."

Public ownership

Ms O’Reilly said the hospital should remain entirely within public ownership and its clinical operations should be independent from all non-medical influence.

She said the motion also called for all maternity hospitals in the State to have access to foetal anomaly screening, along with the requisite staff and equipment.

She said most of the country’s 19 maternity units did not offer foetal anomaly screening, as prenatal ultrasound assessments by qualified sonographers and foetal medicine specialists were not available outside the larger units.

She said there was also a “dearth” of perinatal psychiatrists and other specialists, despite the enactment of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act, 2013.

Referring to the conditions at the current NMH site, Ms O’Reilly said: “Due to hospital overcrowding . . . there isn’t sufficient space to allow women who have lost babies grieve away from those women who are celebrating the birth of their own children, and that I think is a tragedy . . . and it cannot be allowed to continue.”