Aideen Hayden (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Like many people, I have been listening to the coverage of the scenario at Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise. It has been truly harrowing to listen to the accounts of some of the women who were interviewed following the meeting last night. The Minister, Deputy Varadkar, sat for five or six hours last night and listened to the stories of all of those people with deep respect.

As someone who worked in both Dundalk and Drogheda when there were various issues around maternity care in that region, I find it severely troubling that we have a serious legacy of mishandling maternity cases going back well over a decade. I understand that we are to have a new national maternity strategy. One of the issues I would like to see addressed is the impact of whistleblower legislation on maternity care. For all the years that people were suffering in our hospitals, there were staff, doctors and all sorts of people going in and out. I believe there will never be an effective strategy for health care, or any other care sector, if we do not have adequate whistleblower legislation. I would like to see that included in a maternity review.

I was pleased to see some of the announcements in respect of the mortgage arrears situation yesterday. I am not entirely convinced that they will deal fully with the situation, and they need to be kept under review. As we all know, the mortgage-to-rent scheme has proved very disappointing, although it could have been much more significant. There are a number of reasons for this and we should debate it at some point. There is an issue concerning valuations, particularly of properties in the Dublin region. Even with the renewed valuations, a number of middle-income people with properties over those limits will have no real effective solution when it comes to the mortgage-to-rent scheme. I would like us to consider a mortgage-to-shared-equity scheme. Banks took the benefit when times were good and they should take part of the pain when times are bad. Instead of shelving split mortgages, why not ask banks to take part of the equity in properties that go over the limit for the mortgage-to-rent scheme?

I wish to request an early meeting with the Minister for Finance or the Minister for Social Protection on the Money Advice and Budgeting Service, MABS.