Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit as ucht teacht isteach chun an nithe i dtosach suíonna seo a fhreagairt. This important issue affects families throughout the country. It relates to neonatology services, particularly in children's hospitals, and the provision of neonatal intensive care units, NICUs. We have a problem. There are NICUs in maternity hospitals, but where babies requiring surgical interventions or interventions in certain specialist areas are transferred to the four Children’s Health Ireland, CHI, hospitals in Dublin, there is no NICU available to them. They are going into what is called a paediatric intensive care unit, PICU. Although the professionals there are highly qualified, they do not have the specialist skills involved in neonatology, including neonatological intensive care.

We are discussing incredibly vulnerable children - the tiniest, most premature, sickest babies who are born in Ireland – who are most in need of highly specialist intervention. These are babies who sometimes weigh less than 0.5 kg and whose lives are very much in the balance. We are lucky to have people within our medical services who are highly qualified in making surgical interventions – what is called subspecialist intervention – to save these babies’ lives.

I read in The Irish Times that Dr. Ann Hickey has resigned from her position as clinical lead of neonatology services because she has repeatedly asked the Department and the HSE to provide an adequate number of qualified people and NICUs in children’s hospitals to serve these vulnerable patients. Those have not been provided, which I understand is why she has stepped down.

What I have outlined creates a major problem. It sets us behind every other EU country. We are not making these necessary facilities available. Worse, we hear all the time about how we are spending so much money on a state-of-the-art children’s hospital. That is welcome and there is physical provision within that for NICUs and the neonatology teams that would service these very vulnerable patients, but it will not be possible to set up such a team there once the hospital opens. It is something that needs to be in place already. That team could then transfer from the existing CHI infrastructure into the new children’s hospital. There is no such team, though. The people leading other teams are telling us that it is not there and that they will not have the capacity to transfer over to the new hospital. This means that, after the physical facilities have opened, it will take years before the personnel are in position to deliver the services that we need to save the lives of very premature and very ill children.

The consequence of this is that there are children being born today who have less of a chance of survival because the State – the Government or the HSE – is not providing the infrastructure we require to give them a fighting chance. That is unforgivable, as we have the means to do it. This is about an investment in human capital. We need to put the neonatological nurses and consultants in place. I am told that approximately 15 consultants and 80 nurses would be required. It is not a massive investment, but the return on it for the families and tiny children involved is huge. This country has such a good record of low-mortality birth rates. It would be a terrible shame and a massive tragedy for the individual families concerned if we did not maintain that record and ensure that every child born with a difficulty had every chance of surviving.