An unfair two-tier system is, at last, giving way to universal state care. But private interests and highly paid doctors are resisting

There were no chandeliers in the public ward where I spent my first days as a mother, at the oldest continuously operating maternity hospital in the world. The room echoed with cries, the well-worn floor bouncing under footsteps, the windows looking out on Dublin’s city centre.

Now the Rotunda hospital, where I’m due to give birth again soon, is counting down to its 1 millionth baby. It is also at the centre of a bitter debate over plans to reform Ireland’s two-tier state healthcare system, so that those who pay to “go private” in public hospitals no longer gain an unfair advantage over those who don’t.

Caelainn Hogan is a journalist and the author of Republic of Shame: How Ireland Punished ‘Fallen Women’ and Their Children

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