Stephen Donnelly has insisted St Vincent’s Hospital has “no hidden agenda” in refusing to sell the D4 site for the National Maternity Hospital to the State.
The Health Minister also claimed that the Attorney General told him using a CPO (Compulsory Purchase Order) to acquire the land would fail.
The row over the €1 billion hospital dominated the political agenda again on Thursday.
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The Government has ‘paused’ a decision on whether to go ahead with a lease deal to co-locate the new hospital on the St Vincent’s campus in Dublin 4.
The lease would last 299 years at a cost of just a tenner a year, but the taxpayer would never own the site.
An official Government decision is due in two weeks, but in the meantime the issue has split the Government parties, with divisions in Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens.
Many members of the public cannot understand why the Government cannot just compulsorily acquire the land.
They have done this in the past for roads and other infrastructure projects, like when they bought land adjoining the Corrib gas field in Mayo.
Mr Donnelly was asked this by the Irish Mirror on Thursday morning and he replied: “would it not simply be easier to own the land?
“The only way to do that if someone doesn’t want to sell you something, but in fairness gives it to you for nothing for 300 years, is to CPO the land.
“The very clear legal advice I have (from the Attorney General) is as follows, there is absolutely no guarantee that a CPO would succeed.
“We would have to show that we need to own the land.
“I would imagine that St Vincent’s would say, or indeed the courts would say, well, you do own the land for the next 300 years.
“So come back to us in 300 years and then we can have the conversation.
“But for the next 300 years you essentially own the land.”
The Health Minister urged people to trust the motives of St Vincent’s in not wanting to sell.
He said: “There is no hidden agenda that I have ever seen or that has ever been expressed to me.
“Are people suggesting that somehow the clinicians who work in St Vincent’s Hospital have a hidden agenda, all I’ve ever seen is one agenda, and it is what is written into their constitution.
“It’s what’s written into the constitution of the non-profit charitable company.
“It’s what’s written into the constitution of the new NMH to provide the best possible health care services for women, men and children in this country.”
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