Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister of State for her reply but I do not believe that the HSE has a contingency plan in place. A quarter of the total number of midwives in the Mid-Western Regional Maternity Hospital are leaving at the end of the month. Deputy O'Dea has raised these concerns on a number of occasions. The consultant obstetrician, Gerry Burke, has said that people could die. These are not outrageous comments. They are comments of concern coming from eminent people who are expressing the view that there is no contingency plan. He said that if there was such a plan, the HSE and the Government are not sharing it with anybody who should be involved in delivering a plan to make sure that we have safe delivery of babies in this country. It is incredible at this stage that the HSE has not got a contingency plan that it can show to the people. We are one month away from an exodus of the most experienced midwives in this country.

While I thank the Minister of State for her reply, I know that it is a reply that was scribbled together from the HSE contingency plans. There is no meat in it. It is basically a bland answer to fob me off. The bottom line is that the director of the HSE's obstetrics and gynaecology programme, Professor Michael Turner, and a consultant obstetrician, Gerry Burke, have clearly stated that this could cost lives. Accident and emergency and midwifery are the two key areas where we have to ensure that we have a competent number of staff in place at all times. We can deal with elective surgery and so on at another time, but we cannot have a deficit in key front line services when we wake up on 1 March and realise that a quarter of the total number of midwives have retired.

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