Professor Fergal Malone:

We could talk for a long time about the resource issues. Personnel is clearly one. We are still very much in deficit when it comes to operating theatre nurses and midwives, although that situation is improving.

It is great that the National Maternity Hospital will be moving to a new space in the near future and Cork University Maternity Hospital has a beautiful new building in recent years but the physical structure of many other hospitals is not conducive to providing the best possible care for patients. One could have a situation where a patient recovering from a surgical management of a miscarriage - and in the future that might be recovery from a surgical management of termination of pregnancy - wakes up from anaesthesia in a recovery room separated from a woman recovering from a caesarean section holding a crying baby. That is an appalling vista but those are the physical structures of some of our hospitals currently. The resources we need are not only in the area of personnel; we need all 19 maternity units to have as good a physical construct as Cork University Maternity Hospital or the new National Maternity Hospital. They are the standard we should aim for. There is a very significant capital infrastructural requirement.