Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael)

Why have the Ministers for Education and Science and Health and Children not appeared before this House? It is an absolute disgrace and it ill behoves the Seanad, as the second Chamber of the Oireachtas, that the Minister for Health and Children has not come before it to discuss the callous cuts regarding medical cards. We need an answer giving the reasons she has not been to the House.

While the Leader is inviting the Minister to the House, he should also ask her why Cork University Maternity Hospital, which was built at a cost of €75 million and opened last year to great fanfare, has a capacity of 7,000 births per year but is now catering for 8,800. What is even more damning of the Health Service Executive is the fact that a woman in the southern region may have to give birth on a trolley in a hallway. Is it acceptable in modern Ireland that the HSE cannot plan ahead and is now asking women to give birth on trolleys in the hallways of a modern maternity hospital? The Irish Examiner has reported on this issue and I have made my own inquiries with the INO which has been able to confirm the risks that are presented to the health and safety of women who are due to give birth.