Laura O'Doherty

Would it have made a difference?

And I think I want people to listen and think, I don't, this is not meant,

Yeah, well, I would say...

That's different than a private hospital.

Publicly funded hospitals that we're all paying.

I think universal healthcare would say we believe that everyone should have access to excellent care where they need it no matter who they are.

continuity of care is something that we should be and are working on in the public system, you know?

And I think everyone does need to see... It would be amazing if everyone saw the same person every time.

And not everyone needs to see it.

What I would say, what I say about that is when we listen to Jessica talking about why she wanted private maternity care, a lot of it was continuity of care and feeling safe and feeling

like you know this system is going to look after her so a public system that is getting more and more public only consultants like I saw the same consultants multiple times in a row towards the end of my pregnancy in the public clinic a young consultant is in a public only contract because I was deemed like someone that needed to see them so you will get appropriate care that you need in the public system and continuity of care but I don't think you have a right to a private obstetrician in a public system that we're paying for through our taxes you know

I don't think that that's something that, I think you have the right to safe maternity care where you feel like you are being looked after well and you have continuity of care.

And I think that people, a lot of people who go private haven't had the experience of public, so don't actually know what they're fearful of because they're listening to the rhetoric on the radio, the consultant obstetrician speaking, publicly saying this because there's a conflict of interest there, which we're maybe not talking about, but there's a lot of

money in the background there.

I don't have a conflict of interest talking about this.

I'm not anything to do with maternity care, but when you think about what's motivating people to keep this going and not just improve them, it's

We have us all talking on the radio about how we want the public services to be better.

How can we improve those instead of maybe being on the radio talking about how we need to protect for a small percentage of patients a different experience that is not necessarily better.

There isn't evidence to say that private maternity care has better outcomes.

We don't have that research in Ireland for a reason.