Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I confirm I am in Leinster House. I thank Mr. Reid, his colleagues and the entire HSE organisation for their colossal work over the past 15 months. The vaccination programme has put it up to all critics. It is very successful and ahead of schedule. I congratulate them very much on where it is going. It is a roaring success.

I will get into a number of questions. In terms of partners accompanying expectant mothers at maternity hospitals, and I know the witnesses have been mentioning this in their contributions, but I understand from today onwards there will be some kind of uniformity guideline. We believed something similar would happen five weeks ago and yet maternity hospitals, individually, decided how they would apply those guidelines in their contexts. Will Dr. Henry outline to us how this will progress from here on? What level of autonomy do they have and in what timeframe does he expect people to start changing their guidelines and becoming compliant with this?