Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I do not think the Taoiseach has read the report and I ask him, when he gets an opportunity away from his other pressures, that he might do so because that was a muddled reply, which was all over the place.

Even when the former Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Cowen, was written to, it took a year to get an acknowledgement. When a woman wrote about a second consultant in the same hospital to the Medical Council, the letter was lost. The report is littered with this kind of thing and the Taoiseach is entirely missing the point. If there had been whistleblower protection, a member or members of the health service staff would have brought this to light earlier.

I draw the Taoiseach's attention to a single conclusion on page 322 of the report, which states:

In making recommendations, we are aware that our inquiry has been uniquely confined to an examination of documents, practices and structures in Lourdes hospital maternity unit. It is, therefore, not clear whether this maternity unit was unique in its practices or whether similar practices and attitudes are found in any other peripheral hospital in the State.

What does that mean? What steps are being taken to explore the meaning of that particular, ominous paragraph?

I am not clear from the Taoiseach's contribution whether it is the intention of the Government to implement the recommendations of this report. Has the Minister for Health and Children had an opportunity to study it and bring proposals to Government? Her idea of incorporating elements of this into the common contract, if it is ever renegotiated, with consultants is good but other recommendations have been made and I am not clear from what the Taoiseach has said whether it is the attitude of the Government to implement them. It is an extraordinary saga that this could have gone on over 24 years and were it not for a particular midwife who blew the whistle, the doctor might still be doing it. There is no other way of misrepresenting what she did and it does not matter whether she was dealing with another matter.

I do not understand the Taoiseach's reply on the question of Patient Focus and its discussions with the Minister for Health and Children and so on. Will a suitable system of redress be put in place for the women who comprise that group and who were so disgracefully treated at the hands of our health services?

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