Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Thank you Deputy. I want to express my own sympathies to the Murphy family. It was heartbreaking listening to Vivienne's family and what happened to her. My sincere sympathies are with her family and friends. It was just an awful situation. As the Taoiseach said in the Chamber yesterday, there might be some additional training we can look at regarding the recognition of strep A and the prescribing of antibiotics. It was a heartbreaking situation.

I will be led by the clinicians on paediatric ICU care. There is a clinical view that we have a national centre of excellence in the national children's hospital and at the moment in the existing children's hospitals in Dublin. If there is a clinical case to be made for a second centre in Cork or elsewhere, I will consider it very seriously. The Taoiseach made the point yesterday that it could have unintended consequences of us perhaps not being able to find the specialists required to fully staff two centres but I will certainly be led by the clinicians on that.