The former Master of the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) Dr Peter Boylan has again raised the coherence of the ethos of the various parties involved in the proposed relocation of the National Maternity Hospital.

He has claimed the Catholic Church could not give permission for a gift of land to build a hospital that would conduct abortion, even though abortions are currently taking place at St Vincent’s hospital which was founded by the Sisters of Charity and beside which the new NMH will be built under current plans.

In addition, the Vatican has already given the nuns permission to transfer to St Vincent’s Holdings, a charitable company, the site upon which the hospital would be built.

However, Dr Boylan told RTÉ’s DriveTime: “There is no way that the Sisters of Charity will be able to hand over ownership of the land without the permission of the Vatican. The Vatican will not give permission to build a hospital in which abortions will take place”.

St Vincent’s Holdings received a letter last year from law firm, McCann FitzGerald, which said nothing in the charity’s Constitution meant they were bound by canon law.

This is so despite the company’s documents pledging that they would uphold the values and vision of the founder of the Sisters of Charity, Sr Mary Aikenhead.

Archbishop Eamon Martin has previously rejected an argument that the Sisters were engaged in formal or proximate material cooperation with abortion as, he said, “the clear intention of the Sisters in transferring the land and property was for the purposes of a new and much-needed NMH, and that this intention dated back several years, predating the regrettable removal of the Eighth Amendment in the Constitution of Ireland which sadly has given way to a much more liberal abortion regime in this country”.