Fr Kevin Doran has resigned from the board of Mater Hospital after the Catholic-run institution agreed to comply with the Government’s controversial abortion law.

Fr Doran, a bioethicist, said that he could not in conscience remain either a member of the Mater Hospital Board of Directors or Board of Governors as a result of the move, the Irish Catholic reports.

“I can confirm that I have resigned because I can’t reconcile my own conscience personally with the statement, largely because I feel a Catholic hospital has to bear witness.

“It’s about bearing witness to Gospel values alongside providing excellent care,” Fr Doran told The Irish Catholic.

The Catholic hospital announced last week in a brief statement that it “will comply with the law as provided for in the Act,” however, the hospital authorities have refused to give further clarity on the issue or how the issue affects the Catholic ethos of the hospital.  

Earlier, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said he would seek further clarity from the hospital authorities on the “exact meaning” of the statement.

While the Archbishop insisted he has no direct governance role in the hospital, he does have a role in Church law to guarantee that Catholic institutions are living up to the teaching of the Church.

A spokeswoman for the Archbishop told The Irish Catholic that “he believes the hospital has always been ‘scrupulous’ in trying to defend both the life of mother and the unborn child and the hospital has a great tradition of caring for very difficult pregnancies and doing it well within the ethos of the hospital over many years.

“He will seek further clarification on the exact meaning of the hospital’s statement issued last week,” the spokeswoman added.

Meanwhile, one of two nuns on the board of the Mater hospital in Dublin has stressed it “won’t be performing abortions” following the introduction of the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Act.

Sr Eugene Nolan, nurse tutor at the hospital, said that the resignation of Fr Doran was “a tragedy” and a “huge loss”.  

She said she was still considering her response to the decision by the hospital to comply with the Act, the Irish Times reports.

However, she said: “The Mater won’t be performing abortions. This is a matter of how we deal with complicated situations.”

There had been five babies delivered at the Mater in the last 12 months, following the transfer of pregnant women with serious complications from the Rotunda hospital, she said.

“The women had serious heart conditions. I guarantee you in England those babies would not have been born, the pregnancies would have been terminated. We deal with complicated situations, we do not set out to lose babies. If we do lose babies it’s not because we set out to,” she said. “A dose of reality is needed here.”

Sr Eugene, a former midwife who worked in England and Kenya before returning to the Mater in 1981, said of Fr Doran’s resignation: “It’s a tragedy that’s he’s gone. We will certainly miss him. He has been with the hospital for many years. He is a huge loss.”

She too expressed concerns about the Act at the time of Fr Doran’s statement in August, saying it was “against our ethos”.

Asked about her position now, she said: “I don’t know where we go now. I’m going to see. I will see what is said.”

The question of the hospital’s compliance with the Act had been discussed at an “exhausting four-hour” meeting of the board of directors on September 17th, Sr Eugene said.

Among the options discussed was a legal challenge to the Act. “But we don’t have the money to take on the Government. We are caught and we are back to ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune’. What could we do? Go down to the orthopaedic ward and say: ‘There’ll be no more hip replacements because we have to mount a legal challenge’?”

The issue was also an “extremely difficult one” for the Sisters of Mercy, founders of the hospital in 1861 and still majority members of its parent company the Mater Misericordiae and the Children’s University Hospitals (Temple St) Ltd.

“I don’t know what the sisters will do,” she said. A spokesman for the Sisters of Mercy said there was “no comment”.