John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to go back to the issue of clinical appropriateness and to summarise my understanding in this regard. It is about ensuring that if pressure comes from other areas of speciality within a general hospital, such as cancer care or cardiac care, or there is potential overcrowding in the emergency department, and if there are free beds in maternity, those beds simply cannot be encroached on by other professional medical services. The maternity hospital is ring-fenced, in effect, for maternity and neonatal services. As I understand it, that is the context from which the term "clinically appropriate" derives.