Susan O'Keeffe (Labour) | Oireachtas source

There is no doubt this is a very serious matter. We are all agreed that improving maternity services for women in this country and for the birth of children is a key issue and there should be no disagreement about this. I welcome the fact there is a review of national maternity services. It would be a nonsense to review one part and not the other. We live on a small island and are all interconnected. It would be a folly, and the Opposition would be right to jump up and down, as it were, if a review was being done of one part of the country but not of the others.

I am surprised by Senator MacSharry's confusion over the report with regard to some of the matters raised in it. Senator Ó Domhnaill stated it is all on the table. I would have thought any review should rightly put everything on the table. Any proper review should state every single thing that goes on should be reviewed. This is my understanding of the word "review". If the Opposition were jumping up and down stating only one or two suggestions had been made and asking where the rest were, I would agree, but everything has been put on the table. The report states these things are possible, that they could all be closed down and moved to Timbuktu. It is not a folly at this point to review everything, because in the interests of proper research and providing information, one looks at everything and, one by one, those suggestions which are not at all appropriate are excluded. One cannot possibly carry out the review required at this point without reviewing all the options.

The report makes very clear on several pages, none of them mentioned by either Senators Ó Domhnaill or MacSharry, the grave risks that would occur if various options were pursued. The report mentions in particular the distance people would have to drive. Anybody who has ever taken an interest in the research done in other countries and the experiences of other countries knows two key things are at play, namely, economies of scale and distance, and they are probably equal in value. Big risks are written against the options, such as that the travel distance will deprive certain people of certain things or that the travel distance is too great.

Did Senator MacSharry not see that when he read the report? That is what it meant and the people making the decisions are experts, unlike me. Unlike him, I do not claim to be an expert and would not wish to be charged with making the final decisions.

I understand from talking to the HSE in recent weeks about this matter that it proposed and is engaged now in a full and frank discussion about this issue with the staff concerned in this group of hospitals. I say to Senators MacSharry, Ó Domhnaill and anybody else that those staff are the experts. They are the people who deliver thousands of babies and they are the people who employ midwives. I see that Senator MacSharry finds reading his iPad far more interesting than engaging in a debate that he called for.