Seán Kyne (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Reid and the team. I compliment the staff members of the HSE on their work during the pandemic, particularly on the success of the vaccination programme which was always dependent on supply, as has been proven with the increased delivery of vaccines and the increase in patients who have been seen.

I am also going to touch on maternity services. As others have said, we have been inundated with testimonies, which were sometimes heartbreaking, from expectant mothers, mothers who gave birth last year and some who have suffered heartbreaking situations where news around scans and anomalies was delivered in a very cold fashion because of Covid. I will briefly read some testimony. A lady called Stacey contacted me to say that partners are not visitors, fathers are not visitors and that she needs her husband to be there during labour and the post-natal period. She asked that these restrictions be lifted, as this uncertainty is crippling. Another lady, who lost a baby to stillbirth, wrote that not one more woman should ever have to walk the road she had walked alone.