Colin Black

Yeah that's right Ciarán thanks for having me on and

So just preface what I'm going to say by making a couple of points.

I am a consultant.

I work in Crumlin Hospital in pediatric anesthesia.

I am male, so I don't have personal experience delivering a baby, but my wife certainly has.

I'm on the new contract, the POC 23 contract, and I don't do any private practice myself.

And so we started this conversation about Fintanil Tool's article, which, I mean, I do agree with his overarching message, which seems to be take the private out of the public system because it's being government funded.

I don't agree with the phrases he used in terms of, you know, push pushing and all that sort of stuff.

So for me, what's not up for debate here is women's choice.

Women are absolutely entitled to choose a public system, choose home births, choose private care if they so wish.

I have worked in a maternity hospital as a trainee.

So if you were in the public system and it was the middle of the night, you were getting me as your anaesthetist.

And I thought I did a pretty good job.

So I think the care is good in the public system.

But the major issue for me is kind of its contractual obligations, its practicality and its availability of facilities.

So I've been a consultant for seven years, so I was on the old contract and when the new POC 23 was put to all of us, we had a choice to make.

We could stay on our old contract or we could review the new one and sign it.

And it was quite clear and obvious there that, you know, if you did engage in private work in a public hospital, that you would be asked to reduce that down in a phased manner and that should finish in December 25.

So we all knew that.

Immediately, it was obvious to everybody who read it that the major problem was going to be with obstetricians.