Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats)
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595. To ask the Minister for Health if a group has been established by his office or any other institution of his Department or HSE for the purpose of carrying out investigations into maternal deaths; if so, if he can clarify the rationale for such a group; the reason that such investigations are not conducted, as a matter of course, by HIQA; the budget for this group; the source from which it is allocated; the way that the group is constituted, including membership and governance structures; the person or body that the group reports to; if the establishment of the group has been subject to Houses of the Oireachtas or Cabinet-approval; and when reports and finding of the group will be made public. [3128/23]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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Serious adverse events in maternity care have a devastating impact on the families concerned. It is vital that our health services take steps to ensure serious adverse events in maternity care are appropriately reviewed and responded to at a national level.

The HSE’s Incident Management Framework was launched in 2018 and updated in 2020. The HSE’s Incident Management Framework is applied to the management of individual incidents and is the mechanism for incident investigations in the HSE, including maternal deaths. In line with the HSE’s Incident Management Framework reports relating to service user incidents are personal to the service user and their relevant person(s) and as such are not generally published.

In addition to these processes, funding of €540,000 was provided from Budget 2022 through the Estimates process for the establishment of the HSE’s Obstetric Event Support Team within the HSE’s National Women and Infant Health Programme (NWIHP). I have asked the HSE to respond to the Deputy directly on the queries regarding operational matters of the HSE’s Obstetric Event Support Team.

In relation to the Deputy’s query regarding Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA). HIQA has developed the “National Standards for Safer Better Maternity Services”. HIQA have an associated monitoring programme and by their continued monitoring of services, HIQA acts to drive compliance with National Standards and promote quality improvement and shared learning.