Professor Sean Daly

There's no doubt about that.

Yeah, but nobody's employed privately.

There are consultants in the Rotunda who are there, who do their public work and are then permitted to take privately.

For you or for anybody else, you know.

And so obstetricians are in all the time, you know, in the middle of the night.

And the return is very busy.

So, frequently, I think things happen on the labour ward and, you know, a given consultant would be in and they would be asked, you know, you wouldn't have a look in room two, you know, the midwives who are excellent, excellent, excellent, might have a concern and the consultant engages in that situation.

If they weren't there for their private patients, they wouldn't be available to engage.

I don't think there's any evidence for that at all.

In fact, there's evidence to the contrary.

Every woman in the Rotunda is as safe as every other woman.

Every baby is as safe as any other baby.

So that was absolutely not the motivation.

And I think the other, I suppose, salient fact here is that this isn't really an issue now for the Rotunda.

So there was five women delivered, five babies, up till the end of May.

there was over 600 private deliveries.

So there's plenty of private practice in the Rotunda because people haven't changed.

Yeah.

Now, that isn't the case throughout Ireland.

There are many units that are now not able to offer the option of private care.