Maire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

On a sombre note, I remind members why we are here. My colleague, Deputy Pat Buckley, has just taken his fourth call this week advising that a mother of four young girls has taken her life. That is the fourth one he has experienced in the local area. It is a stark reminder of why we are here. It is to prevent young girls having to grow up without a mother.

We talked about resilience in children in schools and the development of self-confidence and ability from the start, including in crèches. Would it be possible to consider strengthening the role of the nursing and midwifery staff in the prenatal and perinatal period? They assess the pregnant woman's physical health. They have checklists for blood pressure and all that sort of stuff. They also do post-delivery checks for ten days or whatever. They then check the co-ordination, movement and speech. We need to embed emotional attachment to those checklists because even pre-birth it will flag up possible early intervention, possibly pre-birth, that could take place. Having said that, we have not had mother and baby beds in the State for 15 or 20 years. Mothers are separated from their children as soon as they are born if there are difficulties.

I believe Wheatfield Prison carried out a project on the overuse of benzodiazepines, lorazepam and Valium. The prison took a zero-tolerance approach to it and they are not prescribed. As one can imagine, there is a bit of uproar among the prisoners now and again. It has actually worked for the past three years. While I know it is not the witnesses' area, I have a grave concern about the ethics of pharmaceutical companies approaching prescribers and encouraging the dubious use of medication especially for seven to 17-year old children. That may not be in the witnesses' remit but we need to mention those points at some stage.