Thank you for giving me the opportunity to raise this very important issue. I have been trying for weeks to raise this matter for a number of reasons. The new hospital planned for the Tallaght region is a major decision for that area. It is desperately badly needed and any controversy which would cause delay or cause it to be born in conditions of rancour or dissent would indeed be most regrettable.
In Limerick, a city with a population of less than the Tallaght region, a Government almost fell on the issue of the retention of three hospitals. The new hospital is designed to serve a region much wider than Tallaght and, therefore, it is important that the controversy which has gathered momentum in recent days and weeks is not allowed to develop. There is a responsibility on the Minister for Health to intervene and to ensure that that controversy is nipped in the bud.
The issue of the preservation of what has been described as the unique ethos of the Adelaide Hospital is not just a question of the rights of religious minorities, although these are clearly involved, it is about the respect for all minorities and the extent to which society is prepared to accept the rights of different traditions and the need to develop a pluralist society. It is important to state that nobody is coming into the House to support the imposition of the ethics of any particular church on any hospital.
The Protestant ethos is quite different and distinct from the question of ethics. The Protestant ethic is not imposed on the people who avail of the high quality of service in the Adelaide Hospital. That hospital has always respected the pluralist tradition in our society and it is not merely a question that the Protestant community would want some alternative in hospital care to that provided by the Roman Catholic ethos. However, a great number of people — Catholics as well as Protestants and dissenters — would wish to avail of an alternative to the Roman Catholic ethos and to avoid a situation where a faceless ethics committee are interposed between the doctor/patient relationship. These people do not want an ethical committee which will make decisions overriding that of the doctor and the views of the patient.
The tradition of the Adelaide Hospital is liberal and pluralist, meaning that the Church of Ireland were very reluctant to interfere in the private relationship between a medical practitioner and an individual. They felt, for example, that delicate private issues relating to sex should be dealt with, in all conscience, privately between the practitioner and the person concerned. The Protestant ethos — unlike the Roman Catholic one — is to interfere as little as possible with the individual and medical advisers.
The key point I want to make is — and I repeat — that this is not just a Protestant concern. Very many Roman Catholics would be deeply concerned that if they got in some ethical committee, the members of which they had mostly never heard of, such a committee could override a doctor's opinion on their treatment no matter how legal it was because of some religious doctrine or other.
Some of the procedures most popularly referred to and which are provided in the case of the Adelaide Hospital relate to male and female sterilisation. The fact is that this is a perfectly legal procedure but it is not available to patients in many other hospitals because of the overriding requirements of the rules of those hospitals where it is laid down — very explicitly in the case of some of them — that no procedure may be carried out that is contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church. I might refer to the statement by the Chairman of the Adelaide Hospital Board, Dr. McConnell, that all medical practice which is lawful will be available in the new hospital in Tallaght. He went on to say that, in the Adelaide Hospital, no doctor or nurse is obliged to participate in something to which he or she has moral objections but staff cannot stop any lawful medical practice, as has happened in other hospitals.
I suggest this is an issue that goes to the heart of what kind of society we want. These are circumstances in which generosity is required on the part of the Government — to acknowledge that this issue goes beyond the mere question of providing a hospital to questions concerning religious minorities, other minorities, and indeed is being carefully watched in Northern Ireland for reasons I need not go into. It would be regrettable if we allowed this controversy to develop. We saw the unfortunate intervention by the Bishop of Limerick, Dr. Newman, which served only to distort and inflame the issue. I would not like to see this continuing, nor I am sure, would the Minister.
The Church of Ireland Bishops are on record as acknowledging the generous response of the Taoiseach when he received them on more than one occasion. Yet a question is raised by the fact that the board appear to be experiencing great difficulty in having translated into action on the part of the Department of Health the views expressed in private to them by the Taoiseach. I would like to ask the Minister for Health: why is that the case? In addition, I should like to ask the Minister for Health: why did he appear to put financial pressure on the hospital in 1989 when he refused to allocate a budget until the middle of the year while, at the same time, giving verbal assurances that their traditions would be respected in the new hospital?
If it is possible, a Cheann Comhairle, I should like to share the couple of minutes remaining with Deputy Roche.
