Dozens of doctors urged the Government on Wednesday to quickly settle terms for the new National Maternity Hospital (NMH), saying “misinformation” over the site’s ownership is “derailing” the project. This was followed on Thursday by a letter from Dublin City councillors repeating the same allegations the doctors vehemently denied.

The hospital will be built on the same site as St Vincent’s hospital, which already performs abortions. St Vincent’s private and public hospitals were founded by the Religious Sisters of Charity. They expressed a willingness to perform abortions even when still nominally under a Catholic ethos.

Senior medical figures including NMH master Prof Shane Higgins and three of his predecessors have said the deal now on the table includes “unbreakable legal stipulations” to guarantee that all procedures allowed under Irish law will be provided “including abortion, tubal ligation, gender affirming surgery and assisted reproduction”.

They went on to say that concerns raised about the new hospital on the St Vincent’s campus at Elm Park being “curtailed by any religious ethos are misleading and ill-informed” and it was “manifestly false” to suggest that only full State ownership of the site can assure “the avoidance of religious influence”.

Despite the Doctors’ claims, more than half of Dublin city’s councillors signed a letter on Thursday calling on the Minister for Health to reconsider plans to build the new hospital on private land at St Vincent’s Hospital.

In their letter the councillors express “grave concern” over the mooted plan as it would “result in a privately owned, religiously influenced hospital” where maternity and obstetric services such as abortions, IVF and gender reassignment surgery among others would not go ahead if the hospital was located on land owned by the Catholic Church.