Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

I would have preferred the Minister for Health and Children to have been present but I appreciate the attendance of the Minister of State. The issue I wish to raise concerns a facility in Cork which is due to open on 24 March 2007. Cork has been well served by four maternity units and three in particular, the Bon Secours Hospital, St. Finbarr's Hospital and Erinville Hospital, which are very highly regarded and have provided a service second to none for expectant mothers in Cork for longer than anybody in the House would care to remember. It was decided that, to provide a safer service for pregnant mothers, all the maternity services were to be combined, on the grounds that all practitioners in the area would be gathered under the one roof.

We have a magnificent new building with 144 beds. It is estimated that it will deliver 7,500 babies per year and experts tell me this will quickly rise to 8,000 and more. It has been described by the local HSE as more of a hotel than a hospital, with birthing suites and other facilities we would expect in the modern world. However, there is one fly in the ointment, namely, the staffing levels which experts consider to be adequate to ensure safe practice are not being put in place. The HSE southern area commissioned a study by an expert in midwifery from England, Marie Washbrook, who considered the type of delivery to be expected in Cork, the numbers involved and the population base. She concluded that to deliver a safe service in Cork, there was a need for 383 midwives. At present 317 are on offer and they are not all fully trained, some of them being student midwives.

Midwives in Cork are very good and decent women and any woman who has been attended to by one will say that they are exceptional people and very professional. They are prepared to carry a number of trainee midwives to bring up the staffing levels. A midwife service course was supposed to be offered last year but was cancelled and it now appears it will not just be student midwives who make up the numbers but care assistants and general nurses. This is simply not good enough. A director of midwifery was appointed and left because she was expected to report to a general nursing director, but everyone knows midwifery is a separate profession and has a different agenda.

It is hoped the director of midwifery who was appointed to run the facility will take delivery of midwifery services in Cork in many new directions, including providing a service for people who want home births or to have consultations at home but deliver their babies in hospital. It was never intended, however, for the midwifery service to be dependent on the general nursing service. On 24 March, the Minister for Health and Children will cut the ribbon on a beautifully decorated facility in Cork where no service is available because staffing levels will not be of a standard that midwives in Cork feel will ensure a safe service. As a result, they are refusing to transfer.

Even at this late stage I call on the Minister to delay her visit to Cork to open the hospital and on the Government to engage with the Irish Nurses Organisation to ensure the service delivered to pregnant mothers is safe and one of which we can all be proud.

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