I want to raise the massive elephant in the room relating to the national maternity hospital. I refer to the settlement of a case this week concerning the death of the baby of a couple, which I raise with the permission of their solicitor, on the basis of exceptionally poor clinical judgment, erroneous advice and exceptionally poor risk management by the hospital. It conceded liability in full at 3.55 p.m. yesterday, with nobody there from the hospital to pay any respect to the couple or give any serious apology. Everything that can be done should now be done to protect Ms Price, Mr. Kiely and their baby son, Christopher, whose name should never have needed to be read into the record of this House, from ever having to see this happen to another couple.

What happened to them should never happen again. We are having the wrong conversation on the national maternity hospital. We need to talk about clinical management and the risk to women. We do, of course, need to talk about where and on whose land the new hospital should be built and under what governance it should operate, but unless we also talk about ongoing risk management and how women are treated holistically, we are having the wrong conversation.

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I know something about the very sad case she raised but I do not know all the details of it. That is why I will be restrained in my comments. It was obviously an enormous tragedy for the family and I can only imagine what it is like to be told your child will be born with a severe disability, or perhaps not born alive, and to go ahead with a termination believing it is the right thing for all those involved, only to be told later there was a mistake in the test and that your child would have been born healthy. I cannot imagine it and I do not think someone could ever get over it, quite frankly. I welcome that the national maternity hospital has conceded liability. Once again, it is sad that liability, where it is conceded, is only admitted at the last minute and perhaps could have been done sooner. I would encourage anyone involved in such cases to be as sensitive and honest as possible in their dealings with those involved.