IRELAND
The Irish Mirror
BY BLANAID MURPHY
Economist David McWilliams today attacked the religious order at the centre of the controversy over the new National Maternity Hospital as landlords with rosary beads.
On the Marian Finucane show on RTE Radio 1 he questioned what the Sisters Of Charity were doing running a property company and why they wouldn’t gift the land to the State. He said: “This is like landlordism with rosary beads. It’s like Nama for religious people. It’s nonsense.
“I can’t understand what do nuns do for money? They extract rent, they’re property developers in this case.
“We have a ridiculous situation where religious orders have developed a property portfolio by levying taxes on the ordinary Joe at church collections,” he said.
The main controversy surrounding the plans to build the new National Maternity Hospital on the grounds currently owned by the religious order centres around ownership. Under the deal – which has not been made public by the Minister for Health Simon Harris – the state would spend in the region of €300m to build the hospital but the SoC would retain ownership of the land.
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