Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have a few quick fire questions I might get in. Ms Bridgeman might update us on where the new maternity hospital is at.

Information-sharing systems are very poor and not just in UHL group collectively. I know somebody who on the day of discharge muttered something like, "Sure didn't I get over prostate cancer two years ago". The blood ran out of the care team's faces because hospital staff did not know this. They discharged this person after some weeks. Not every person in their 80s will disclose their full medical history. They presume it will be on a screen somewhere in the hospitals. Information systems in Ireland seem to be chronic. If someone moves from another part of the country, his or her file does not transfer with that person. More is known about my car going for the national car test than there is about my healthcare and that of everyone in the mid-west. I ask for comment on where that is at.

The day Mr. Paul Reid and Mr. Robert Watt last appeared before the committee, I got a series of emails from colleagues at management level in the mid-west who have retired. They said that staff morale is low, which is very easy to imagine, as was management morale. Perhaps the representatives cannot comment on this but those who contacted me cited the fact that financial emergency measures in the public interest, FEMPI, came in 14 years ago, but pay grades that were approved to management have not been implemented. They said it is very galling for management to try to lead initiative after initiative, and pick themselves up every single week to try to drive on UHL group, while people above them have had €81,000 pay-grade pay rises and they have had nothing. They said to me - they had the liberty of being able to say this because they had retired from UHL - that it is galling and demoralising. They said they try to pick themselves up every day but how can they when the chiefs above them have had pay increase after pay increase, while they have not had pay restoration, morale is low and how can they lead on something? It resonated with me. That is something that has never really been out there in the ether. It has to be a factor. When morale is low, how can people drive on a ship? I ask for comment on some of that. Maybe the witnesses cannot comment on the last part, but their retired colleagues have certainly been brave in citing that.