Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I accept that may be the case. However, the masters have a genuine concern. As spokesperson on health, I hear more than most of the undoubted difficulties our maternity hospitals experience. I have heard of the difficulties future mothers have in booking a place in hospitals, of the overcrowding when they get a place, of women being turfed out 24 hours after giving birth, of the strain on staff in dealing with the different cultural practices of non-national mothers and their families, of infection risks and the dangers of mothers presenting in the last stages of pregnancy — often straight from the airport. Nobody disputes the existence of additional pressures on the hospitals as a result of the increased number of births, some of which are non-national births.

Pressures and shortages exist across the health service and maternity hospitals are really not much different from the rest of the service. Demands have been made for information on the extent to which the problem of overcrowding in the hospitals and the increased number of births is due to the desire to claim citizenship. It is impossible to be precise about the figure. However, I feel this does not matter. The number of births is minuscule compared to the potential number of births. It is this principle we must address rather than suggest the difficulty in the maternity hospitals is the problem. There is a genuine practical problem which is surmountable. It can be solved with money, just like the other problems in the health service. However, the potential long-term problem is that we could become the maternity unit for the entire non-EU world. It is the scale of potential abuse which justifies the need for change in our Constitution rather than any of the surmountable practical problems we have seen so far which certainly do not require changes in the Constitution.

I accept that we could have a major problem in the long term. If the problem is a long-term one we have time to deal with it. We should take the time to deal with it effectively and calmly. We will not have an unstoppable tide of pregnant women arriving between now and 11 June. I urge the Minister to take his time in proceeding with this. He must consider whether rushing into this and getting it wrong is worth the risk he is taking in ramming it through now against public will and against the will of many in the Dáil, especially when there is so much potential to build consensus on the issue.

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