Alex White (Dublin South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The director general of the HSE forwarded the 2014 service plan to the Department of Health late yesterday evening. In accordance with the Health Act 2004, as amended, the Minister for Health has a period of 21 days from the date of receipt of the plan to either approve the plan or to seek amendments to it in consultation with the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs.

The question of amending the plan might arise if, for example, the Minister was of the view that the plan did not contain the required information, did not have sufficient regard to previous directions issued or did not accord with the policies and objectives of the Minister for Health, the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs or the Government. The Minister for Health must make a decision in respect of the plan by Monday,16 December next. When approved, the plan must be laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas by the Minister for Health and published as soon as possible thereafter by the HSE. Until such time as the Minister for Health, Deputy Reilly, has had an opportunity to give detailed consideration to the plan, as he is required to do by statute, it would not be appropriate for me to publicly discuss either the broad contents of the plan or to detail any of its specific provisions. However, the HSE was made fully aware when drafting the 2014 plan that the over-riding national service plan priority is, first and foremost, patient safety and treating patients in as timely a manner as possible.

I assure the Deputy that the matter of any necessary patient-centred improvements in maternity care arising from the Health Service Executive and HIQA reports into the Savita Halappanavar tragedy will be prioritised in this regard. We are determined that as a consequence of the sad loss of this young woman our entire health system will learn profound lessons which will ensure that safer more patient-centred maternity care is provided. Naturally, the Minister has accepted the HIQA's recommendation that, as a priority, maternity services should be reviewed and that a national maternity services strategy should be developed and implemented.

I wish to inform the House that maternity services policy will be part of an overarching policy framework to be put in place for hospital groups. The maternity strategy will be developed by the Department in collaboration with the HSE and its national clinical programmes in obstetrics and gynaecology. The development of the strategy will build on the work already undertaken as part of the comprehensive review of maternity and gynaecology services in the greater Dublin area, resulting in the KPMG report, which was itself informed by an international analysis of maternity and gynaecology service configurations. The strategy will address issues, including the issue of appropriate maternity services staffing, as raised by the Deputy, and will recommend best practice models of care for maternity services in future.

See this speech in context