The NMH at St. Vincents

MrMusician18

This saga has been rumbling on for quite some time so I'm a bit surprised that there's no thread on it.

Anyway cabinet looks set to agree to the new proposal of a 300 year lease at a peppercorn rent, and for that 300 years will have full control of the hospital. Some people seemingly have a problem with that, and listening to the campaigners against it, their objections tend to amount to "nuns are bad", and "why can't they just give us the land". All clinically appropriate, legal procedures will be available at the hospital. CPO is not an option as that is only legal when no alternative exists, but this hospital is next to a golf club, close to public lands in RTE and the existence of the proposed lease means that it wouldn't survive a challenge.

Having been in holles st recently, the whole place is so old that it's unfit for purpose and that any further delay to a new building will be a disaster.

mrsmags16

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/sisters-of-charity-to-be-given-new-national-maternity-hospital-1.3052079

Is this a joke?!

Cookie_Monster

The mind boggles...

Ulysses Gaze

mrsmags16 wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/sisters-of-charity-to-be-given-new-national-maternity-hospital-1.3052079

Is this a joke?!

This is laughable.

The order have not even paid off the damages that they were supposed to and now they are being given the keys to the new maternity hospital?

Hope Harris is held to account for this.

Glenster

As long as it sh*ts out healthy babies and there's no proselytizing in the delivery rooms I don't care.

One eyed Jack

mrsmags16 wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/sisters-of-charity-to-be-given-new-national-maternity-hospital-1.3052079

Is this a joke?!

Is what a joke?

NIMAN

What exactly do they get by 'owning' it?

Will they pay the bills?
Will they own the building?
Will they profit from 'owning' the hospital?

rainbow kirby

So wrong on so many levels. The RCC in general, and nuns who were involved in the ill-treatment of the women and children of this country in particular, shouldn't be allowed within a million miles of the maternity services.

Nothing positive for women can come from this.

One eyed Jack

rainbow kirby wrote: »

So wrong on so many levels. The RCC in general, and nuns who were involved in the ill-treatment of the women and children of this country in particular, shouldn't be allowed within a million miles of the maternity services.

Nothing positive for women can come from this.

Same rag (that seems to have quite a hard-on for it's anti-religious bigotry), different author -


Merger of St Vincent’s and Holles Street units in best interests of women’s safety

Michael Keane is clinical director of SVHG and Professor of Medicine at UCD

Chuchote

I feel like emigrating to a civilised country.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3097186/Magdalene-laundry-survivor-reveals-s-haunted-fear-breaking-labour-loneliness-ordeal-60-years-later.html

Campaigner Mary Merritt, 83, who was 'in the care' of the nuns for 14 years before escaping, spoke out in September, 2014, about her ordeal.
She was born in 1931 to a single mother in a workhouse and went on to an orphanage, run by an order of nuns called the Sisters of Mercy where, she says, the children were made to work and were beaten if they refused.
Mary, who now lives in Tunbridge Wells, said that at the age of 11, she was so hungry that she took apples from the convent orchard and as punishment was sent to work in a Magdalene laundry at High Park in Dublin run by another order, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity.
'They told me that I would stay in the laundry until I learned to stop stealing. Fourteen years they kept me there. You get less for murder these days.'
Mary, whose story featured on Our World: Hidden Bodies, Hidden Secrets on the BBC News Channel in September, recalled how the women were made to rise at six o'clock for mass and then after breakfast went straight down to the laundry to start work.
You can't underestimate the sense of the stigma and the sense of shame attached to having been in one of these laundries
Maeve O'Rourke
She said: 'The laundry was heavy, heavy work and the heat was terrible and you didn't break until 12 o'clock when you broke for your dinner, such as it was - potatoes and cabbage and fish - and then after you went straight back to the laundry again to work and you worked in the laundry until at six o'clock.
Most shocking of all, Mary claims that after running away she was raped by a priest, but despite this terrible violation she was ignored by police and then shamed by the nuns.
Mary said: 'When the police took me back to the laundry, they didn't believe I had been raped but shaved my head, made me apologise for running away and put me in the punishment cell.'
But when Mary became pregnant as a result of the rape and gave birth to a daughter, in a stunning act of cruelty, the nuns took the baby against Mary's will and gave her away for adoption.

http://www.thejournal.ie/magdalene-laundry-true-story-margaret-bullen-samantha-long-614350-Sep2012/

At roughly the age of 16, Margaret was sent to the Magdalene Laundry at Gloucester Street. The exact time and circumstances of her move there are not clear because Samantha and her sister are still waiting on full records to be supplied to them on their mother’s past.
She became pregnant – twice – with Samantha and her twin sister Etta, and later with another daughter, while officially under the care of the Gloucester Street nuns. The circumstances of these conceptions are again shrouded in mystery but Samantha says her conversations in later life with her mother when they were reunited led her to believe that Margaret had been the victim of sexual abuse and predators several times.
There was no education, no education and I, you know, I honestly believe for a long time she didn’t know how she got pregnant, she just knew that somebody hurt her once and then she had babies. I really believe that. She didn’t make that connection, I know that for sure. She was no, she didn’t have a boyfriend, let’s put it that way. And that’s the politest way that I can say that.
Some of the more harrowing details of Samantha’s testimony recount how her mother was denied society, education, wages and other basic rights for most of her life. This extract recalls Samantha and Etta’s first meeting with Margaret in the Gresham Hotel when they were 23 and had traced her as their biological mother. (Samantha and Etta were adopted by a loving couple in Dublin and later moved to Sligo in childhood.)
Margaret was only 42 at the time but looked much older. She was carrying a handbag but it was completely empty, because she didn’t own anything nor did she have any money. Samantha recalls:
And, she was just lovely, and she was asking extremely innocent questions like, she, it was the first time she ever had coffee and it was very exciting for her to have coffee and she hadn’t seen brown sugar before either and obviously in the Gresham there was brown and white sugar cubes on the table and it was all very fancy to her. And she was just overjoyed to be there and absolutely wowed by everything.
She looked, she looked like a pensioner. I couldn’t believe she was forty-two, I kept looking, I kept looking into her face to find a forty-two year old and I couldn’t, because she had the face of hard work, that face that you see in so many women that have just had to work too hard and have never had a rest and have never had anyone to take care of them or tell them to put their feet up, and who have just, just worked too hard. Because, as I said on the radio a few years ago, this was slavery and I don’t use that term lightly and I’m not an emotive person but slavery is a form of work for which you get no pay and you can’t leave and these were the white slaves of Ireland and they were never emancipated. And nobody stood up for them until now, until you guys (Justice for Magdalenes) did.

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2016/03/30/whod-have-the-likes-of-you/

The former Donnybrook laundry compound in Dublin 4 (top) is currently up for sale (centre) and is expected to sell for around €3million.

The Sisters of Charity ran the laundry from 1883 until 1992 when the order sold it to a private owner who, in turn, ran it as a commercial laundry until 2006.

A former resident, who didn’t wish to disclose her name, spoke to RTÉ journalist Brian O’Connell about the year she spent in the former Donnybrook magdalene laundry in the 1970s. Independent Dublin City Councillor Mannix Flynn was also interview.

"In the orphanage it was very bad, very bad. We were starving and we never got proper food to eat, not proper clothes. I never had proper jumpers, I used to darn all the jumpers.

“And my hair used to be shaved to the scalp. We used to rob the orchards, do you see, you know? And if you were caught robbing in the nun’s orchard, your hair would be shaved. I was locked into a press for three or four days without a bit to eat. That’s the truth, I wouldn’t tell you a lie.”
The woman was locked in the press because she robbed apples out of hunger.

She then described what life was like in the Donnybrook laundry.

“[It was] torture, torture. The work in there, we were so tired at night going to bed, do you know what I mean? And then up at six or half six in the morning to scrub the floors… and then marched in to church for prayers. And then down to work again. You might get bread and dripping or bread and Stork margarine or a cup of cocoa for breakfast in the morning….They ruined our lives. On my deathbed I’ll be thinking about it. I’ll never forgive them [the orders].”

“We were never allowed to talk to each other, even in the dorms at night, we were never allowed to talk. We had no education, they took away my childhood, I was just traumatised. I got electric shock [treatment], I went to commit suicide when I came out, over the convents. I took an overdose of tablets and everything. Thinking back on all this, what had happened me: why my mother left me?”

The woman is still looking for her mother.

Varik

To summarise, St Vincent's getting new hospital built on their campus after merger with largest shareholder being an order of nuns.

Click bait

HONKEY TONK

I don't see the problem

Chuchote

HONKEY TONK wrote: »

I don't see the problem

Well, let's hope you never have septicaemia and need an abortion then.

Samaris

HONKEY TONK wrote: »

I don't see the problem

The problem is that a lot of people in Ireland want basic social services, by which I mean education and medicine, taken out of the hands of the religious orders in light of two decades of religious scandals involving..well, education and medicine, particularly against the most vulnerable people in Irish society, spanning back to the founding of the State.

The second problem is that, having been found culpable of a range of horrendous actions against vulnerable people, the Church hasn't finished paying reparations, overall behaved pretty badly in terms of making up for their actions against many people still alive today that suffered through it's less-than-Christian care and the IRRC appears to be getting out of it rather lightly. This ends up with a maternity hospital that will again be owned in most part by an order of nuns who will have a great deal to say in the running of the place and an awful lot of people no longer trust religious orders to be having anything to do with vulnerable pregnant women and their babies.

While it's true that this order specifically may not have done anything and may not even be inclined to enforce rules in such a way that we have more deaths of pregnant women desperately in need of a procedure the Catholic Church disapproves of, we have seen women die -recently- under a similar order with similar ideals and the vast majority of the population found it shameful. That the Irish State is allowing this certainly comes across as a ridiculously, egregiously, insulting and bad idea. Religious orders have failed in the duties they took up and shown little inclination to truly regret it or fully accept what damage they did and were allowed to do. This is a gesture of putting trust in another such religious order without the Church having really cleaned up its own backyard in terms of its abuses of power over the vulnerable.

Chuchote

Samaris wrote: »

While it's true that this order specifically may not have done anything.

They certainly did. Look up the Murphy Report. If you can find it… 

One eyed Jack

Chuchote wrote: »

Well, let's hope you never have septicaemia and need an abortion then.

Is an abortion considered treatment for septicaemia now? I don't think it is.

Mr.Wemmick

It's big business, pure and simple. The corperate RCC, power and money.. money received from years of working slaves and the selling of Irish babies.

Just lovely.

pjohnson

Another day another anti RCC thread in AH

Chuchote

One eyed Jack wrote: »

Is an abortion considered treatment for septicaemia now? I don't think it is.

It's the norm if you're in danger of death, like Savita Halapannavar.

HONKEY TONK

Mr.Wemmick wrote: »

It's big business, pure and simple. The corperate RCC, power and money.. money received from years of working slaves and the selling of Irish babies.

Just lovely.

I find it funny that people are shaking their fists at the RCC being involved yet more the 90% of the parents who's kids are born there will go running to the church 6 months later to get their baby baptised.

sullivlo

One eyed Jack wrote: »

Is an abortion considered treatment for septicaemia now? I don't think it is.

It is if you have septicaemia as a result of a septic miscarriage.

Chuchote

HONKEY TONK wrote: »

I find it funny that people are shaking their fists at the RCC being involved yet more the 90% of the parents who's kids are born there will go running to the church 6 months later to get their baby baptised.

Partly tradition because the grandad would like it; partly blackmail because their child won't get an education without it.

ChikiChiki

pjohnson wrote: »

Another day another anti RCC thread in AH

Well deserved in fairness. They don't get half enough of the level of criticism they truly deserve.

One eyed Jack

Chuchote wrote: »

It's the norm if you're in danger of death, like Savita Halapannavar.

Ehh, no, it isn't, not by a long shot, and if I'd realised that's the case you were referring to, I'd have suggested you read the HIQA report which concluded that the cause of her death was medical misadventure, essentially that procedures which dictated that routine checks were observed, weren't.

The new hospital and it's location will allow for much more efficient treatment of pregnant women if they experience life-threatening conditions during pregnancy or childbirth.

I don't know that it will improve incompetence levels among staff though.

One eyed Jack

Chuchote wrote: »

Partly tradition because the grandad would like it; partly blackmail because their child won't get an education without it.

Don't do any fact-checking anyway whatever you do.

gctest50

pjohnson wrote: »

Another day another anti RCC thread in AH

They may not be the best for the job

How do they feel about say IVF ?

Noddyholder

Chuchote wrote: »

Partly tradition because the grandad would like it; partly blackmail because their child won't get an education without it.

Or partly because most people in Ireland still follow there catholic faith to some degree or another contrary to what a few folks on boards would have you believe.

Wheeliebin30

Just don't pick this hospital to give birth if it bothers you no?

4ensic15

There is no orchard there, so what is there to worry about?

The Bishop Basher

Chuchote wrote: »

Partly tradition because the grandad would like it; partly blackmail because their child won't get an education without it.

How do you know this ?

Or are you just making assumptions about others choices and beliefs based on your own personal experience ?

Mr.Wemmick

HONKEY TONK wrote: »

I find it funny that people are shaking their fists at the RCC being involved yet more the 90% of the parents who's kids are born there will go running to the church 6 months later to get their baby baptised.

Many no longer do it. Social conditioning and pressure is still evident today; primary school communion springs to mind where it is big business and the RCC spend a lot of energy in and out of primary schools making sure families do what is expected. Educate together schools are on the rise and becoming very popular so changes are happening.

My kids are not RCC. I don't buy into it, even though my parents did.

gctest50

Far from the best

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/catholic-church-s-influence-over-irish-hospital-medicine-persists-1.2626856

. Both the Mater and St Vincent’s prohibit female sterilisation, a standard procedure which is not illegal, and is carried out in non-Catholic-run institutions, as well as other treatment centres. In the 2006 Lourdes hospital inquiry report, Judge Maureen Harding Clark highlighted that the “prohibition on sterilisations” gave rise to the performance of what have been described as compassionate hysterectomies.


Between the 1940s and 1980s, the barbaric symphysiotomy procedure was performed in preference to Caesarean sections, a decision driven by religious ideology.


Further evidence that medical care at State-funded hospitals is often influenced by the religious views of board members surfaced in 1994, when the Mater banned HIV- prevention leaflets and posters from its Aids unit. The hospital’s chief executive agreed the Catholic ethos was a factor in thi

Chuchote

Would it not be more sensible for the State to take St Vincent's and all its parts as part-payment for the vicious abuse over many decades by this order?

whisky_galore

I would be wondering how many actual 'sisters' the order has.

Nuns have to be in their 70's or 80's now. It's not like new recruits are flocking to the cause anymore.

One eyed Jack

Chuchote wrote: »

Would it not be more sensible for the State to take St Vincent's and all its parts as part-payment for the vicious abuse over many decades by this order?

The State outsourced the provision of education, welfare and healthcare services to religious orders in the first place because it couldn't afford it. The State also tied themselves up in Constitutional knots because they now simply can't do what you're suggesting without an amendment to the Constitution, and that would require a referendum, which there is no demand for, in spite of the way you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise from reading Boards...

and the Irish Times.

Mr.Wemmick

To say that the values of a religion will not have an influence as majority shareholders in a business is very naive. Historically the facts point us in the right direction as to what happens. Murky waters, indeed.

I also find it odd, clearly seen on many a thread on Boards, how people confuse God, the bible and belief in the spiritual as belonging solely to RCC. As if an objective criticism of the RCC as an organization is therefore wholly and totally a criticism of everything spiritual.

The reason that many still hold links to the Church in Ireland is because the RCC have had a stronghold and a monopoly, and many can not separate their need for faith with the Irish Church, even if they wanted to.

I don't see the Irish Church as a true religion anymore, it just big powerful business, like any other.. and just like big business they seem to consistently get away with being held accountable for their crimes.

God is whole different subject.

Chuchote

One eyed Jack wrote: »

The State outsourced the provision of education, welfare and healthcare services to religious orders in the first place because it couldn't afford it. The State also tied themselves up in Constitutional knots because they now simply can't do what you're suggesting without an amendment to the Constitution

I doubt this very much. An organisation involved in the systematic abuse of children and women should be possible to force to pay. It is clear from the revelations during the time of the investigations and since that the action and protection of this was systematic and systemic within the Catholic Church in Ireland - and including what you might call Ireland's church colonies, the American and African missionary outreaches.

seamus

Swanner wrote: »

How do you know this ?

Or are you just making assumptions about others choices and beliefs based on your own personal experience ?

The latest census shows Catholicism on a massive decline.

Being someone who's in the age bracket now where I'm surrounding by parents with young children, the majority of people are getting their kids baptised, but few if any of them have any real religious inkling. They do it to get their kids into schools because nobody in Government has the balls to make it illegal to discriminate based on religion.
The majority certainly wouldn't be particularly anti-religious; they'd be more along the lines of, "Ah shure it did me no harm and isn't it just about the baby Jesus", but they certainly wouldn't be "Catholic" by a longshot.

Mr.Wemmick

whisky_galore wrote: »

I would be wondering how many actual 'sisters' the order has.

Nuns have to be in their 70's or 80's now. It's not like new recruits are flocking to the cause anymore.

They don't necessarily need new nuns, they recruit lawyers, technical staff just like any other business.. but they get to keep their business practices/ methods secret. No one truly knows, but it's more than an educational guess to say they are incredibly wealthy and powerful.

Quite possible the real reason the government doesn't want to disentangle themselves from the Church, it would cost them a fortune. Akin to Brexit, lol!

One eyed Jack

Chuchote wrote: »

I doubt this very much.

I thought you might alright:


ARTICLE 44

1 The State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion.


2 1° Freedom of conscience and the free profession and practice of religion are, subject to public order and morality, guaranteed to every citizen.


2° The State guarantees not to endow any religion.


3° The State shall not impose any disabilities or make any discrimination on the ground of religious profession, belief or status.


4° Legislation providing State aid for schools shall not discriminate between schools under the management of different religious denominations, nor be such as to affect prejudicially the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending religious instruction at that school.


5° Every religious denomination shall have the right to manage its own affairs, own, acquire and administer property, movable and immovable, and maintain institutions for religious or charitable purposes.


6° The property of any religious denomination or any educational institution shall not be diverted save for necessary works of public utility and on payment of compensation.

An organisation involved in the systematic abuse of children and women should be possible to force to pay. It is clear from the revelations during the time of the investigations and since that the action and protection of this was systematic and systemic within the Catholic Church in Ireland

The systematic and systemic abuse you're referring to was practiced under British rule long before the formation of the State in the form of workhouses. Irish society at the time was quite happy to have the undesirables removed from sight... out of sight, out of mind, etc, but quite happy to support and supply these workhouses with services and workers. It was only upon the formation of the State that the religious orders were given responsibility for the removal of undesirables from Irish society that nobody else wanted to take any responsibility for.

and including what you might call Ireland's church colonies, the American and African missionary outreaches.

I think you might find that it was European explorers setting up African and American colonies rather than any legendary accounts about St. Brendan ever pushing off in his little currach.

Chuchote

None of the constitutional matters preclude criminal prosecution.

Forget the sarcasm about St Brendan - I was, as I suspect you know, referring to the gigantic network of priests and nuns and their bosses spread out across the Americas and Africa (and to an extent the Orient) during the 19th and 20th centuries, huge numbers of whom were Irish and in orders run by the Irish Catholic Church.

Sam Kade

Chuchote wrote: »

I feel like emigrating to a civilised country.

What country would that be?

One eyed Jack

Chuchote wrote: »

None of the constitutional matters preclude criminal prosecution.

That's not what you suggested originally, it's an entirely different scenario.

Forget the sarcasm about St Brendan - I was, as I suspect you know, referring to the gigantic network of priests and nuns and their bosses spread out across the Americas and Africa (and to an extent the Orient) during the 19th and 20th centuries, huge numbers of whom were Irish and in orders run by the Irish Catholic Church.

I wasn't being sarcastic. European explorers and settlers were committing atrocities abroad in the name of King (and/or Queen) and country, long before Irish missionaries ever travelled abroad.

whisky_galore

Mr.Wemmick wrote: »

They don't necessarily need new nuns, they recruit lawyers, technical staff just like any other business.. but they get to keep their business practices/ methods secret. No one truly knows, but it's more than an educational guess to say they are incredibly wealthy and powerful.

Quite possible the real reason the government doesn't want to disentangle themselves from the Church, it would cost them a fortune. Akin to Brexit, lol!

So....it's a racket with just a religious facade now?

The_Valeyard

ChikiChiki wrote: »

Well deserved in fairness. They don't get half enough of the level of criticism they truly deserve.

Ah f*ck off with your bigotry posting.

Sick of anti Catholic threads in AH.


Anything to do with RCC, the SAME posters, the same posts, the same rants.

Chuchote

Sam Kade wrote: »

What country would that be?

It would have been France, but France seems to be going through the same fascistic Catho tube now.

Graces7

One eyed Jack wrote: »

The systematic and systemic abuse you're referring to was practiced under British rule long before the formation of the State in the form of workhouses. Irish society at the time was quite happy to have the undesirables removed from sight... out of sight, out of mind, etc, but quite happy to support and supply these workhouses with services and workers. It was only upon the formation of the State that the religious orders were given responsibility for the removal of undesirables from Irish society that nobody else wanted to take any responsibility for.


Are you really positing that the Catholic Church bore no responsibility for the systemic abuse of literally thousands of Irish children, within living memory?

And are you really calling eg young women who had been raped and were pregnant and incarcerated for that reason " undesirables"?

I was recently at Letterfrack in Connemara, at the burial ground used by the Christian Brothers at their Industrial School, ie where they sent young lads for any reason and none.. Please explain why and how 4 year old was committed there by the Gardai, and have a google at the nearly 100 graves of kids from 4 upwards.

"removal of undesirables from Irish society"?
Says it all really! A total lack of humanity

And how were the tiny babies buried at Tuam "undesirables"?

The sooner the Orders literally die out the better. Giving them yet more power and money is madness.

ScumLord

Someone from the government would need to go in every night and count the babies, then check the bins on the morning.

Graces7

The_Valeyard wrote: »

Ah f*ck off with your bigotry posting.

Sick of anti Catholic threads in AH.


Anything to do with RCC, the SAME posters, the same posts, the same rants.

I am not anti catholic. I am very much anti abuse and making excuses rather than taking the full blame and sincere reparation. The impression given is always that they are not sorry for what they have done, but only that they got caught.

Although I am a good Catholic, or rather because I am, I have not been near a church for a long while. Not in Ireland.

We are expected to confess our sins and make reparation. That is a major teaching. We are not seeing that carried out at higher levels.

Irish Guitarist

Renowned atheist Saint Vincent must be spinning in his grave.

Chuchote

The Catholic Church in Ireland and its branches abroad and its agents raped children, tortured women and ran what was effectively profitable jails for generations, as well as selling babies - to God knows who or what kind of abusers.

Father Flanagan, who founded Boys' Town, was shocked and disgusted and spoke out against the horrors he saw here when he visited Ireland.