Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have a brief comment. The Chairman is very kind to indulge me. Ms O'Connor would be well aware of this but I will say it for the benefit of our visitor. A somewhat distorted picture of the reality of our maternity services was painted there and I can speak with a small degree of confidence as somebody who has used the maternity services in this country and seen my daughter use those maternity services very recently.

The witness is in a country where 20-week anomaly scans are not offered to women. It is something that would be considered very basic. Before we get ourselves into a frenzy of praising the maternity services in this country - the men and women who deliver those services are exemplary - we should realise that this is a country where a 20-week anomaly scan, if one is lucky, might be offered if that woman is in one in six of our maternity units. In truth, this routine screening is not offered to pregnant Irish women. Dr. Louise Kenny from Cork University Maternity Hospital has made it clear that women under the care of maternity services undergo unnecessary procedures because of the failure by the State to provide this scan for women.

That is one example but if I chose to I could take up all the time in this meeting describing exactly what it is like in reality to use the maternity services in this country. It is a fact that one cannot as a matter of routine access a 20-week anomaly scan in this country. I would not want the witness to think he had somehow landed in a sort of maternity paradise, as he has not. The truth is very far from that.