Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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First of all I would like to say that I wish Dr. O'Reilly the very best of luck. There has been a considerable loss of trust in the services being provided at Portlaoise and she has her work cut out for her. That said, I genuinely wish her the very best.

Mr. O'Brien came in here this afternoon and in his first correspondence with us he spoke about costs and resources as an issue with regard to the provision of services. I am curious as to why, given that we all defended the HSE service plan for 2014 in which patient safety was mentioned in the opening paragraphs somewhere between five and ten times.

Given our concern for patient safety, when it was discovered the Midland Regional Hospital, Portlaoise was 16 midwives shy of the number required for a hospital with a 24/7 accident and emergency unit and that the one consultant was only working four days a week, why did top management of the hospital or the HSE not react by either closing down the services or at that point decide to resource them? Why did it take the"Prime Time"programme on the awful tragedy the Molloy family experienced in the hospital before Ian Carter went to Portlaoise?

With respect, when Mr. O'Brien talks about the HIQA report being a watershed with changes being made now, did the 86 families whom the Minister for Health met last night, who in the past number of years had told their stories and testimonies to the senior management in both the hospital and the HSE up to office of the director general not of itself sound an alarm bell to signal that something was wrong with the delivery of services? Did top management not realise they would need to go to Portlaoise and address the issues arising from the services? Did the top management need to wait for a "Prime Time" programme or a HIQA report to deal with the problem?

When Dr. Philip Crowley wrote to me, his title was national director of quality and patient safety, but today he is listed as the national director of quality improvement. Is that not ironic? If Dr. Crowley is no longer in charge of patient safety, who is responsible for this role? During the time he was in charge of patient safety, which was until at least February of this year, how many times did he go to the Midland general hospital to discuss the adverse incidents that had happened in the hospital and the actions that would need to be taken? The report of the inquests made recommendations on the changes that needed to be implemented.How many times did Dr. Crowley discuss with the local management how the changes should be costed, resourced and implemented?

I have major concerns about the quality patient safety directorate, but as I do not want to bring the committee into disrepute, let me state that personally, I have no trust or confidence in Dr. Crowley's ability to manage the patient safety authority. The facts speak for themselves. We have had so many adverse incidents during his period in charge, and not just in maternity service, that if I were in that role I would be questioning how we are actively looking at patient safety.