Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for the opportunity of raising this important issue which is of concern to women and families throughout the country. I regret that the Government has not provided time for this to be addressed in the Dáil in a more substantive way. I reiterate my call on the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, to address the House on the issue and take questions from members.

When Melissa Redmond courageously spoke out about her experience in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda she was followed by other women across the State who had similar experiences. The common factor was that the women were not properly listened to when they raised their concerns about their diagnoses of miscarriage. They trusted their own instincts and sought second or further opinions. All were women who had previously experienced pregnancy and, in some cases, miscarriages. They had learned from experience. They were in a position to make their own judgment and seek a second opinion. They had happy outcomes, thank God, and their children are alive and well today.

However, our thoughts must go also to the many women who are now living with the dreadful thought that their pregnancies may have been terminated based on a misdiagnosis of miscarriage. This is not just about the Melissa Redmond case or the women who have spoken out. They would be the first to acknowledge that, because the very reason they spoke out was to alert people to the wider implications.

The Minister has stayed largely silent on the issue, which is a cause of great concern and grief to many women. Now, for the first time, the Minister, in reply to a Dáil question from myself, has admitted that she had known of the Melissa Redmond case since August 2009, the month following the mistaken diagnosis of miscarriage. In her reply yesterday, the Minister described how her Department and the HSE handled the Redmond case. Crucially, however, she gives no indication that the wider implications were considered, or the possibility that women had similar experiences in other hospitals.

The Minister needs to explain why it was only after the issue received widespread national publicity that the HSE ordered its review of cases over the past five years. Why was it only after the story broke in the media that the HSE wrote to all public and private maternity units advising them to establish immediate measures to ensure that decisions to avail of drugs or surgical intervention with women who have had diagnoses of miscarriage must be approved by a consultant obstetrician? Why have different standards and practices apparently been applied in different regions and maternity units? HSE West has said that second scans in cases of suspected miscarriage in early pregnancy are now standard. Is that the case in other regions? Is the HSE setting standards?

This will be a highly traumatic experience for possibly hundreds, if not thousands, of women who may find that their viable pregnancies were terminated after being wrongly diagnosed as miscarriages. The Minister stated in her reply to my parliamentary question that the HSE is-----

See this speech in context