Ms Phil N? Sheaghdha:

Maternity hospitals record assaults against midwives. Those figures are part of the public record. It can be partners or visitors. Unfortunately, the whole Covid restrictions on visiting and partner attendance with birthing mothers was a real issue and a pressure point. Unfortunately, the midwife was the visible face of that policy albeit not the author of it.

As Ms Chambers set out in her opening remarks, there are many times when policies mean that people who attend hospital services have long wait times and perceive that they are being denied a service to which they are entitled.

A third of the workforce are nurses and midwives. Those are the ones they see and they lash out, rightly or wrongly. We believe the employer must know this as it is entirely predictable. It has to be prevented. It is not good enough for the employers or the political system to say that legislation has been strengthened, such as the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act and other criminal justice legislation because that requires the individual who is assaulted to pursue the person who assaulted them, and to continue to provide care in some instances.

Our point is that these are workers in a workplace and they have to have the same status as a construction worker, retail worker or somebody on a farm. The Health and Safety Authority, HSA, must take the same approach to this workplace and it is not doing that. In our view, it is failing in its regulatory function and the employer is failing to provide the duty of care that it must provide to these essential front-line workers.