There is growing concern about the proposed new national maternity hospital. That concern is based on two issues: the question of ownership and the question of ethos. On ownership, most people simply cannot fathom why the State would even contemplate gifting a valuable asset worth more than €300 million to a private entity. That must stop. Does the Taoiseach agree?

There is also grave concern, especially among women, about the fact that it is proposed to transfer ownership of the new national maternity hospital - and it will be called the National Maternity Hospital - to a private religious entity, the St. Vincent's Healthcare Group. It is wholly inappropriate that this should be the case in this day and age. The fear, which is very well founded, is that women will be denied access to the full range of healthcare services provided for under the law. We know that religious orders have a special place in the Constitution. Under Article 44, a religious order can control what it owns. When the Supreme Court has been asked to interpret this part of the Constitution it has always supported the right of the order to protect its own ethos. We know that when it comes down to deciding the ethos of Elm Park the Constitution will have to prevail and the order will win out.

The Mulvey report was a brokered deal done behind closed doors between two private institutions, St. Vincent's and Holles Street, with no reference at all to the public interest but the Minister, Deputy Harris, continues to blindly maintain that the Mulvey report can provide a solution. What is the status of this report now? Surely it is redundant.

In May 2017, the Minister for Health asked for a month to get to grips with the crisis facing him. He has now had 17 months and he has not managed to square this circle because it is simply not possible. Can the Taoiseach now give an undertaking that the new national maternity hospital will be taken into public ownership as a condition of public funding; that the more than €300 million which has been earmarked for the new build will be conditional on this change in ownership; and that the new national maternity hospital will be governed by a new secular charter which is fit for the 21st century?

The Government is committed to the national maternity hospital relocation project. We want to see it go to tender, if not this year certainly next year and we want to see it go to construction next year. It involves the development of a new maternity hospital on the campus of St. Vincent's at Elm Park and also improvements to that hospital. The new hospital will be funded by the State and is included in Project Ireland 2040. The hospital will have full operational and clinical independence. We intend that it should apply the medical ethics of our State and our Republic and not those of any religious order. The development will represent a flagship project of the national maternity strategy and will constitute the largest single investment ever made in maternity services in Ireland. However, it is essential that the legal and governance arrangements associated with this very significant State investment are robust. Considerable work is under way and has been undertaken to develop a legal framework for this project to protect the public's significant investment in the new hospital. This legal framework will also underpin the operational and clinical independence of the new hospital from St. Vincent's. Once finalised - and it has not been finalised yet - the proposals will be subject to consideration by the Government, the national maternity hospital itself and St. Vincent's Healthcare Group. I assure the House that patient care in the new hospital will be delivered without religious, ethnic or other distinction and that any medical procedure which is in accordance with the laws of the land will be carried out there.

It should also be said that the model of stand-alone maternity hospitals is not the norm internationally. Government policy is to co-locate all remaining maternity hospitals with adult acute services to provide the best clinical outcomes. This has already been done in Cork, for example, so we want to have it done in Limerick as well with the relocation of St. Munchin's to the University Hospital Limerick site at Dooradoyle, the Rotunda to Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown and the Coombe to St. James's Hospital where it will be trilocated with the national children's hospital that is now under construction.

With respect, I put it to the Taoiseach that he is not in a position to give the guarantee he gave here today. It is simply not possible under the law as it stands to give that guarantee. This is not about protecting an investment; it is about ownership. When it comes to ownership, the Constitution will always trump any agreement that has been done between the Government and a private religious entity. It is somewhat ironic that the Minister for Health recently set up a group to examine the strange relationship between voluntary hospitals - especially those that are religious based - and the State and to make recommendations for how that relationship can be renegotiated in the future. It is ironic that he looks as if he is about to take steps to repeat the mistakes of the past without having regard to any lessons learned.

In light of what the Taoiseach has said today, I am asking if he will give an undertaking that any draft agreement that is proposed to be done with St. Vincent's Hospital in respect of the national maternity hospital will be brought before the House before it is signed off on by Government. People simply cannot believe, on the evidence of the Constitution and the laws we know of, that what the Taoiseach is proposing is actually possible.

As it is still a matter under discussion involving the Department of Health, the national maternity hospital and St. Vincent's Healthcare Group, I am not in a position to give commitments until we know what the outcome will be. We have a good precedent in the national children's hospital, which I was involved in and which the Minister, Deputy Harris, has also been involved in. We took Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin, which is a voluntary religious associated hospital-----

It is a different situation.

-----Temple Street Children's University Hospital, which had an association with a religious body in the Mater Hospital, and the National Children's Hospital in Tallaght, which had an association with the Church of Ireland, and have taken them together and put them on a site that is publicly owned and which will be under a statutory board. We have a good example already of how we have taken three hospitals that had a voluntary religious ethos and put them together on one site with a statutory board. This is a matter that is not yet resolved but if the Deputy can see what we have done with the children's hospital, it is the kind of outcome we will be looking to achieve with regard to the national maternity hospital.

We have quite a number of voluntary hospitals in Ireland. A lot of our hospices are run by voluntary bodies which are often associated with religious bodies. We should not make an automatic assumption that it is always a bad thing because there is a long history and tradition of care there and many people have a very high regard for some of those hospitals.