Professor Chris Fitzpatrick:

I think so. In international terms, the statistics from the maternity services in Dublin and elsewhere in Ireland are exceptionally good, although there are obviously cases where adverse circumstances happened that, looking back, could have been avoided. One of the things we have been very concerned about over a long period of time is the resourcing of the maternity hospitals. I cannot remember how many reports came out when I was master of the hospital which made recommendations for co-location, recommendations in terms of staff, recommendations in terms of infrastructure, etc., but very few of them were delivered. We have a women and infants healthcare programme, which is still cash strapped. We have the lowest number of obstetricians in the OECD. These are issues that need to be addressed, but I think front-loading the maternity services with money improves outcome, improves quality of care and reduces adverse outcomes, and in reducing adverse outcomes, it reduces medical legal claims. In terms of escalating medical legal claims, the way around that is to front-load investment into the service, and that, in a sense, would minimise risk. The answer is "Yes" in terms of the development of new hospitals and new models of care and improving staffing levels and attracting people back from abroad who have gone away to train because they are looking at our maternity hospitals and are saying that they will not come back from Toronto or Sydney because they are working in state-of-the-art, tri-located centres. Why would they come back?

There may be difficulties recruiting people to work in the children's hospital, because they have seen a hospital mired in controversy. To get the best and the brightest to come back to this country to work in our maternity and paediatric services, we need to deliver to them what they require in terms of infrastructure. That is for the mothers and babies, not for the staff.