IRELAND
Irish Times
Kitty Holland
Several thousand people marched under glorious Dublin sunshine on Sunday calling on the Government to ensure the new National Maternity Hospital (NMH) is not controlled by a religious order.
Construction of the new NMH, which is to be located on the campus of St Vincent’s Hospital, will be paid for by the State, but – according to terms of the current agreement – will be gifted to the St Vincent’s Healthcare Group, owned by the Sisters of Charity because it owns the land.
A petition on the Uplift.ie site, calling for this not to happen, has had more than 100,000 signatures.
Sunday’s march was organised by Uplift.ie in conjunction with the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI), Parents for Choice, Terminations for Medical Reasons and the Justice for Magdalenes group.
Among the slogans on numerous placards were, “No nunsense in our hospitals”, “Not just a storm in a tea-cup, storm over a septic tank”, “Time to kick bad habits” and “Savita”.
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