Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise the massive elephant in the room relating to the national maternity hospital. I refer to the settlement of a case this week concerning the death of the baby of a couple, which I raise with the permission of their solicitor, on the basis of exceptionally poor clinical judgment, erroneous advice and exceptionally poor risk management by the hospital. It conceded liability in full at 3.55 p.m. yesterday, with nobody there from the hospital to pay any respect to the couple or give any serious apology. Everything that can be done should now be done to protect Ms Price, Mr. Kiely and their baby son, Christopher, whose name should never have needed to be read into the record of this House, from ever having to see this happen to another couple.

What happened to them should never happen again. We are having the wrong conversation on national maternity hospital. We need to talk about clinical management and the risk to women. We do, of course, need to talk about where and on whose land the new hospital should be built and under what governance it should operate, but unless we also talk about ongoing risk management and how women are treated holistically, we are having the wrong conversation.

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