Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important motion. It is now five years since the national maternity strategy was launched. It was hailed at the time as setting out radical reforms of maternity and neonatal services over a ten-year period. However, last year HIQA published a report following inspections of 19 maternity units and hospitals, during which it discovered that the HSE had no plan for how to implement the strategy. Years after launching the plan, the HSE did not know how it would be implemented. That makes it appear that the launch was just put together to make it look as if something was being done.

A key recommendation in the strategy was that maternity services should be woman-centred. Unfortunately, for the best part of the last year maternity services have not been woman-centred. They are still not today. Women are being left without the support of a partner at appointments, at scans, during the full labour and after the birth, and there are restrictions on visiting. They do not have the support of their partner to allow them just to have a rest or a sleep after giving birth. Trinity College Dublin carried out research last year on women's experiences of maternity care during the Covid pandemic. Women spoke about feeling emotional, anxious and fearful when entering the maternity hospital alone. While women described their midwives as being very supportive during their early labour experience, for most this was not enough. They needed their partner. Many women described the unusual situation of their partner waiting in the car park while they were in early labour. They spoke about going out to the car park to walk with their partner, to pass time and to be with their partner in sharing the experience. I cannot begin to imagine how worried and scared those women were.

It is bad to launch a maternity care strategy and not implement it up to now, and then to leave women in the situation they were left in during the Covid pandemic, particularly when it comes to labour. The least the Government can do now is implement the strategy with full funding.

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