Professor Louise Kenny:

The issue in Cork is both topical and very pertinent to the discussion and illustrates at a fundamental level the disparity of care in women's health provision. When CMH opened in 2006-2007, I was a newly appointed consultant. My colleagues had argued successfully for a budget that was adequate to run the hospital. Had we had control over that budget - no increases and no particular incentives - we would not be where we are now. We are where we are now with 4,000 plus women on our outpatient waiting list and 2,000 plus women waiting for surgery because pregnant women and women with gynaecological issues are on not trolleys, not in the headlines and not on the radar. They are the first to be cut all the time. Year on year, we have lost our budget to the main campus. I am not pretending or suggesting that the money has been misspent in any way. It has been reallocated to vital clinical care but the past ten years have been ones of fiscal constraint. It has been very difficult in every hospital and in every form of health care provision across the entire country. That money has been spent in other areas of clinical care and not on gynaecology or maternity services and, consequently, we are where we are now with waiting lists that are worrying beyond belief.

We were asked directly whether we are advocating a different model from the mastership model because we do not have the mastership model outside Dublin. I am agnostic as to what we call it - a master or mistress. All our colleagues nationally agree fundamentally on the need for one single accountable individual with clinical and executive management and oversight. I can assure the committee that if we had that in the past ten years, we would have no waiting lists and our hospital would be the flagship it was designed to be and could be if we were adequately resourced. We are not talking about an increased budget. We are talking about the budget we argued for back in 2006. If we had that and governance, our waiting lists would not be making headlines nationally.