Almost 100 candidates have signed a pledge promising that, if elected, they would ensure the new national maternity hospital (NMH) would be built on state-owned land.

The petition is organised by the Campaign Against Church Ownership of Women’s Healthcare. It asks signatories to press for the state to disengage from a planned 99-year lease on a site at Elm Park in south Dublin, owned by St Vincent’s Healthcare Group. However, it does not clarify whether it wants the site seized by the State through a compulsory order, or whether it wants to build the hospital on a greenfield site.

The pledge states that those who sign it will support the establishment of “a state entity to ensure a new, secular maternity hospital under public ownership and control, that will be free to provide abortion and other services without the barriers of a Catholic ethos”.

Among the signatories are candidates for the Social Democrats, Sinn Fein, Labour and independents. No members of Fianna Fail or Fine Gael have signed. The first signatory was Róisín Shortall, co-leader of the Social Democrats.