Ruadhán Jones
It is “disrespectful” and “biased propaganda” to demand the Religious Sisters of Charity award the land for the National Maternity Hospital to the State, the Editor-in-Chief of the Irish Journal of Medical Science has said.
Dr Bill Tormey told The Irish Catholic that the “nuns would be ill-advised to award the land to the State” for free.
“I really think that’s wrong, I think it’s unfair of any politician or lobbyist or newspaper lobbyist to demand that they do that,” Dr Tormey said.
Dr Tormey, formerly a councillor for Fine Gael, said the sisters should only give it away if “it’s part of a trade-off and that’s not giving it for nothing”.
“But for people to demand, in a country where the right to own private property is in the constitution and where in the EU you have the right to own your own property – it’s not fair to make this demand and basically biased propaganda and disrespectful to demand this kind of stuff,” he finished.
His comments come as Tánaiste Leo Varadkar announced in the Dáil that new talks over the National Maternity Hospital and its ownership and governance will take place this week.
He said the Government had not ruled out placing a compulsory purchase order (CPO) on the land on for the new facilities.
But Mr Varadkar warned deputies that such a move would cause further delay and undoubtedly add to the multi-million euro cost.
“It’s not as straightforward as people might think,” he warned, adding: “Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the very good.”
He was responding to Ivana Bacik, new Labour TD for Dublin Bay South, who asked “for clarity that the State will in fact own the land on which the new hospital is to be built”.
Mr Varadkar said it was not a guaranteed outcome, but it could yet come about that the land will be gifted to the State.