Jennifer O'Connell

speaker

2,353 appearances 8 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 4d ago

Jennifer O'Connell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

The Women's Podcast · Festival women / Sally Hayden on love during wartime · 4 Jun 2026 podcast

My second baby was born both small for dates and really early.

And my third was small for dates.

So I was I was happy to have that extra level of care and the additional appointments.

No, but there are

Exactly.

And the thing is that private maternity care is not economically viable.

Otherwise, there would still be a private maternity hospital.

There was Mount Carmel.

It was gone.

There were efforts made to try and find a new buyer for it.

And that didn't happen.

And the reason that didn't happen is that it's not sustainable economically without the support of the public health care system.

But Chris makes a really good point in his op-ed that it isn't just about choice and the right of women

And you can really understand why even today women might feel that they don't entirely trust the health care, they don't entirely trust the system.

And I know, you know, everybody who's in the system and regularly deals with the health system, as you do, generally has great faith in it and speaks really highly of the staff and everything.

But the fact remains that Ireland's history of looking after women in pregnancy and in childbirth and afterwards has not been good across the board.

So you can understand why some women might just feel that they would prefer to pay for the private maternity care, know who their consultant is going to be, see the same consultant all the time and so on.

But, and that's all well and good, but there is a question of fairness here because the fact is that when consultants on public contracts

when they're using up their time in the public hospital to see private patients who are paying them, they're effectively cheating their public patients out of their time.

And Chris makes the point that every mother in the state now delivers her baby in a public maternity unit or hospital because there are no private hospitals anymore.

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