Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I respect everything Dr. Henry has said and it is good there is new guidance coming out today. It is morally cruel to deny someone the opportunity to have a partner with them for those key appointments. A medical doctor recently said on radio, which I thought was well put, that pregnancy and labour are medical conditions. In most cases, but not all, the person is good health, and that needs to be stressed.

There are situations in which a maternity hospital is co-located with a medical hospital and there are complexities with that. However, there needs to be uniformity here because there are so many expectant mothers - you would want to see the trail of emails which came in overnight - who are very stressed and worried, many of whom will even give birth today not knowing if their partners can be there for all parts of it or if their partners can attend key appointments if they are at a different stage of pregnancy. It is morally cruel they are denied. I hope the guidelines being issued will be taken up by all hospitals, because there is no political barrier to this. There is no HSE barrier to this but, when it is broken down to management level at each hospital, there seems to have been different implementation and that has been regrettable so far.

This week, 99 years ago, signalled the burning of the Four Courts during the height of the Civil War and, with it, thousand of records were lost, burnt and are irretrievable forever. I am delighted to see in the witness statement today approximately 70% of the records of the HSE files targeted in the malware attack have been decrypted and are again useable. However, are there any files which have been damaged or encrypted which come under the Four Courts category, in that they will be lost, gone forever and irretrievable? Do Mr. Reid and his cybersecurity analysts believe any files are in that bracket?