Niamh Smyth
Question:40. Deputy Niamh Smyth asked the Minister for Health his plans for a roll-out of midwifery-led units across Ireland in line with the national maternity strategy. [37476/21]
View answerTuesday, 13 July 2021
Questions (40)
Oral answers (6 contributions)
Will the Minister outline his plans for the roll-out of midwifery-led units across Ireland in line with the national maternity strategy?
I acknowledge the Deputy's ongoing work in terms of advocacy and finding solutions for women's healthcare, including the national maternity strategy and many other issues. As she is aware, achieving a revolution in women's healthcare is a top priority for me and the rest of the Government. One of the cornerstones of advancing women's healthcare is the national maternity strategy. This year, I allocated unprecedented funding to the implementation of the strategy. To put it in context, we allocated five times more money this year than in previous years. The strategy is a great one, the clinical community has bought into it and it has strong support from patients, patient groups and so on across the country. We need to see it happen now. The funding will increase access to community midwifery and to allied and specialist services for women and babies. It will help expand breastfeeding supports in our hospitals, enhance postnatal care in the community and strengthen training and education supports for staff.
Choice of care for women is essential. Important for ensuring that choice is providing access to comfortable, low-tech and suitable birth rooms for women and families. This is recognised in the strategy and is central to delivering on the goal of enhanced midwifery care. That is why funding of nearly €200,000 is being allocated to the development of three additional home away from home suites this year in Sligo, Letterkenny and Portiuncula, adding to the nine sites already in service. The suites effectively replicate the environment and birthing infrastructure available in the midwifery-led units in Drogheda and Cavan, which will help support the full implementation of the supported care pathway and provide enhanced experiences and choice for women, which is essential.
I thank the Minister. I compliment him on his advocacy for this initiative. He mentioned Cavan general hospital and the midwifery unit there. It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge and compliment its staff on the magnificent and pioneering job they do in that flagship midwifery-led unit, the first of its kind on this island. After it came the one in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda.
The pandemic has given us an opportunity to put a new focus on midwifery-led units and home birthing. We have seen a magnificent increase in the number of women and families looking to deliver their babies at home. That is welcome. Such an holistic approach is important if women are to have a choice. The Minister invested in that, which is welcome. Is there an opportunity to find ways to expand upon our midwifery-led units?
The short answer is "Yes". We need to put as much funding into and political and administrative focus on these services as possible. We must push on. That is why there is so much focus on getting the national maternity hospital, the home away from home suite strategy and the national maternity strategy moving as quickly as possible.
With regard to the home away from home suites referenced by the Deputy, it is a similar environment to the birthing infrastructure of the midwife-led units, MLUs. There are nine sites, in Drogheda, Cavan, the Coombe, Mullingar, the National Maternity Hospital, Wexford, Cork, Waterford and Limerick. Four sites in Kerry, Sligo, Portlaoise and Letterkenny are developing services as well. Some €195,000 was allocated this year. Some 19 services have antenatal midwifery clinics which is really important. Some 74 midwifery-led clinics are being held every week, which is fantastic to see. The national average of 24% of women are in a supportive care pathway at this point.
From my experience in terms of the Cavan midwifery-led unit there, what I have found important and crucial to the further expansion, development, growth and promotion of that unit is buy-in from GPs. As I said, the one in Cavan not only provides a service for Cavan-Monaghan, but is a more regional midlands service for women across the area. Does the Minister have any input in terms of how GPs are buying in? Those types of midwifery units are dependent on women having that engagement with their GPs when they are making that decision for their pathway of care on maternity services. There is much to be garnered and gained from our GPs and those primary care services in communities throughout the country. If there is buy-in from those, we will see exponential growth in our midwifery-led units. I often find, from talking to women, they are not that aware of the service available. What can we do to encourage and nurture that?
It is a great question. There is no doubt there is more opportunity to improve the services in the community and in primary care. One of the things I have recently funded is a women's health lead with the Irish College of General Practitioners, ICGP. That is the first time we will have a lead person whose job it will be do exactly that, with regard to figuring out whether more communication is needed with GPs, what other work, services and healthcare provision GPs can lead in the community and whether more training is needed in terms of core training for GPs, continuous professional development and so forth. Part of the answer is that and part of the answer is ongoing engagement with the GP community and its representative group to prioritise these. The Deputy will have seen there are some things we are doing which are acute-based but which will help. We have funded an endometriosis service specialising in advanced cases in Tallaght which will give more referral pathways to GPs as well.