Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)

It is with particular sadness that I speak today. A young expectant mother, who lived in the same estate as myself, died in childbirth. Her family and the wider community were in shock and deeply saddened. Let me, therefore, first express my sympathies with the family of Tania McCabe — her husband Aidan, their children, and the families of Aidan and Tania.

When this happened my personal amateur, non-medical reaction was that it must have been the kind of devastating and unfortunate accident which sometimes happens in medical practice. As a nurse, my wife's immediate reaction was that this should not happen in Ireland or in the western world. How right she was. This should not have happened in Ireland.

A report made by the HSE was leaked, as usual, to the media before we legislators saw it, although in this case it seems the family saw it before it reached the newspapers, unlike other cases such as the recent cancer scare. The report paints a devastating picture of the quality of maternity services at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda. According to newspaper reports, which are what I must rely on, staff shortages, high workloads and systems failures contributed to death in this case.

Will this happen again? As a father of a child born in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda six months ago, and who has such hopes for some time in the future, I have no reassurance. The Government, as the Minister of State, Deputy Devins, will be conscious, has a duty to protect our people. I have regularly defended medical services at the hospital and I will continue to defend and praise the midwives and doctors, many of whom I know, but I cannot stand over the systems and the numbers of staff in place. According to newspaper reports, the HSE report states — speaking of the medical staff in general, I think — that their practice and, ultimately, the care that they provided to Tania was compromised by their workload and the environment in which they were working.

The report also identifies shortcomings in record keeping, according to the media. This seems to be a perennial problem when we come to hospital issues. The HSE press release says the HSE will move quickly to look at the recommendations on how best to approach their implementation. This has been said before and must be said. We have heard from the Kinder task force, An Bord Altranais, Judge Maureen Harding Clark and the medical board of the hospital itself. A consultant recently offered to pay for staff out of his own salary. People die in hospital, but in this case it seems that HSE systems contributed to the death in question. I say "seems" because we are relying on media reports and I do not want to intrude on the family's grief.

I will paint a picture of the estate in which we live. It is a brand new estate of perhaps 1,000 houses. Many of the people who live in the estate are, like my wife and I, young couples with young children. There are lots of mothers on maternity leave walking around the estate with their newborns. They are very happy people. One home in that estate has been left bereft of a wife and mother. It is a very sad situation. The Government and myself, as a Deputy for that area, estate and constituency, have a responsibility to get things right.

See this speech in context