Dr. Chris Fitzpatrick:

There is accountability, but there is no single person whom one can telephone to say one wishes to do or know something about maternity services. In terms of what has happened and the diffusion of responsibility throughout the HSE and the Department in respect of policy makers, where people are looking after midwifery services and so forth, there must be one person in charge. That person should have a budget and the authority to enact what we have known for the past ten years must be done. It is a tragic irony that we are here this morning following the publication of yet another report. With the greatest of respect to the people who are undertaking reports, we have a type of post-colonial inferiority complex. We have commissioned hugely expensive reports. I am not referring to the Flory report, but we have used KPMG. We had experts in 2011 which cost a fortune and much of what emerged from KPMG is now superfluous in terms of the way forward. The intellectual property to run the service is within the country. As I said previously, we know what the problem is. There are shelves of reviews and reports in my office on critical instances and with analysis of maternity services, but there has been precious little action.