Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State. I know she fully understands the issue. I am sure she also hears constituents or people around the country raise it every so often. This issue only seems to be raising its head in some maternity units. It does not apply in all hospitals. To be honest, part of the problem may be that it is not a nationwide standard. I fully accept that every unit is different. We are very aware that the infrastructure in the health service is not always what we want it to be. We are dealing with older buildings. Capital spending on the upgrade of maternity hospitals has been a particular focus of the Government and we are doing good work. I want to focus tonight not on querying whether there would ever be restrictions but on querying the fact that we do not make readily available the thinking and reasoning behind it.

In preparing for this discussion, I had a look at what is happening in other countries. I reviewed ten NHS trusts with maternity units. Eight of those trusts have been providing risk assessments for at least 18 months and of the remaining two, one was two years old and the other was three and a half years old. I know the risk assessments are being done.

The people who operate maternity units are well used to evidence-based decision-making and make risk assessments based on what they have to hand. I hope and assume it is not something they are doing without due consideration. The request is to make the consideration publicly available. All our hospitals and hospital groups, from what I can see, have fairly well operating websites and a platform whereby they can communicate with the public. It would be incredibly helpful to people, particularly those in more vulnerable cohorts who do not feel they can speak up and those who do not feel they understand the minimum requirement to manage risk, if the thinking, outline and risk could be made available to them.

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