Like many others, I have been listening to the coverage of the scenario at Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise. It has been truly harrowing to listen to the accounts of some of the women who were interviewed following the meeting last night. The Minister for Health, Deputy Leo Varadkar, sat for five or six hours last night and listened to the stories of all of the people concerned with deep respect. As someone who worked in both Dundalk and Drogheda when there were various issues around maternity care in that region, I find it severely troubling that we have a serious legacy of mishandling maternity cases going back well over a decade. I understand we are to have a new national maternity strategy. One of the issues I would like to see addressed is the impact of whistleblower legislation on maternity care. For all the years that people were suffering in hospitals, there were staff, doctors and others going in and out. There will never be an effective strategy for health care, or any other care sector, if we do not have adequate whistleblower legislation. I would like to see this issue included in a maternity review.

I was pleased to see some of the announcements on the issue of mortgage arrears yesterday. I am not entirely convinced that they will deal fully with it and as such, they need to be kept under review. As we all know, the mortgage-to-rent scheme has proved very disappointing, although it could have been much more significant. There are a number of reasons for this and we should debate it at some point. There is an issue concerning valuations, particularly of properties in the Dublin region. Even with the renewed valuations, a number of people on middle incomes with properties about these limits will have no real effective solution when it comes to the mortgage-to-rent scheme. I would like us to consider a mortgage to shared equity scheme. Banks took the benefit when times were good and should take some of the pain when times are bad. Instead of shelving split mortgages, why not ask banks to take part of the equity in properties above the limit for the mortgage-to-rent scheme?

I request an early meeting with the Minister for Finance or the Minister for Social Protection on the Money Advice and Budgeting Service, MABS.

The Senator is out of time.

I understand the Minister for Finance wants MABS to be a friend to those in distress. It has always a been a friend to them. I would like to hear soon how the Minister plans to enhance that friendship role and what resources he plans to put into it.