Mr. Mark Molloy:

On behalf of Róisín and I, the parents of Mark, as well as Amy and Ollie, the parents of Mary Kate, I thank the committee for the opportunity to address it. In particular, we want to express our gratitude to Deputies Lucinda Creighton and Billy Kelleher for their considerable time and effort outside this forum.

The following is a statement to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health and Children regarding perinatal deaths, maternal and infant injuries at the Midland Regional Hospital, Portlaoise and a chronology of documentation relating to wider patient safety concerns.

On the morning of 24 January 2012, our fifth son, Mark, passed away moments after delivery at the Midland Regional Hospital, Portlaoise. In the intervening three years and four months, Róisín and I have fought against continuous considerable opposition to get an answer to our initial simple question - what happened? How did our boy die? It is a question, we now know, following receipt of additional information under freedom of information in April 2014, to which the HSE had answers within days of Mark's death. Despite being informed by the hospital obstetric and midwifery management that the death of a healthy baby during labour was extremely rare, it became apparent to us very early on that we were not the only family whose healthy child had died in similar circumstances at the hands of this and other regional maternity units nationally.