Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

The Deputy is aware that an external management team, EMT, was put in place in January precisely to try to supervise, assess and make some of the improvements that are needed. There have been some infrastructural works and changes, some of which should have been done before the external management team arrived, which have now been completed, for example a four-bay maternity day assessment unit, MDAU, and a dedicated early pregnancy unit. All of that was in train and should have happened before the external management team arrived. It has now happened. The EMT, and nobody else but the EMT, identified a bungalow adjacent to the hospital that has now been converted to a dedicated maternity outpatient department with six dedicated maternity clinical rooms five days a week from the end of September. That bungalow had been acquired before the EMT commenced but it was for a totally different purpose. It has progressed that as a maternity outpatient department.

11 o’clock

It should not be the case that we need an external management team in Portiuncula hospital. The patient safety issues have been very significant. I have acted on clinical advice to me that it is not safe for high-risk women to give birth there until the changes that are necessary have been made and sustained in a way that can give confidence to everybody.

See this speech in context