Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour) | Oireachtas source

One thing here matters above any other consideration of political debate or different interests in the health service lifting chunks of this report perhaps to support or defend a case that they are making.

Over and above any of that has to be safety for the patient and for women who are admitted to our hospitals during pregnancy. In this particular case, the report stated there were 13 possible interventions that could have been made and which did not happen in the period when Savita Halappanavar was in hospital.

Resources are always an issue; of course they are. However, I do not believe anyone who reads the report could say that resources were the issue in respect of all 13 of the possible interventions that could have taken place. The report in the Tania McCabe case was implemented in five out of the 19 hospitals. That raises the question of why was it implemented in those five but not fully in the others, although it appears to have been partially implemented in some of the others. That must be looked at.

This is a collective thing. As I said earlier, what we have to do is take this report, resolve that this should never happen again and do what is necessary to make sure of that. That means implementing the recommendations in the report. For example, one of the issues raised in the report in terms of the deployment of our resources was whether we should continue to have 19 maternity hospitals or units in the country. That is an issue for all of us because, let us suppose, for example, the Minister for Health came to the House and said that he wanted to rationalise the number of maternity units or wards and have a smaller number of better equipped, better quality and better standard maternity hospitals. Let us ask ourselves in all honesty what the response to that would be.

I put it to every Member that I believe this is a good report. The recommendations in it are very strong and they should be implemented. Responsibility for the implementation of those recommendations primarily rests with the Minister for Health, the HSE management and so on. There may also be issues of choice, general policy and the deployment of resources that will ultimately be issues for everyone in the House. When we come to address those issues, we should do so with the best interests of the patient and of women at heart.

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