POLITICIANS PRESSED THE CEO of the HSE on when high risk pregnancy cases will be treated in Portiuncula University Hospital’s maternity ward again, and on whether the HSE is planning to eventually close it.

Bernard Gloster, the outgoing CEO of the HSE, told the Oireachtas Health Committee today that five reviews into the care of women and infants at Portiuncula are still being conducted and will be completed next year.

He said that areas of concern have been identified around the care given to two women who had still births in the unit in 2023.

In 2024 five babies born at the unit were subsequently referred for therapeutic hypothermia – which is a condition that occurs when before or after the birth there is not enough flow of oxygen or blood to the newborn’s brain.

Those cases have also been reviewed.

Gloster apologised to the women and their partners who had bad outcomes at the Portuincula maternity unit over the years.

Gloster told the committee repeatedly that he cannot say when high-risk cases will be treated at the hospital again.

“We know that the care to 12 women and infants have been reviewed and under review, this is not the first time that the hospital’s maternity unit has come under scrutiny, there was the 2018 Walker report, and that’s why it’s important that time be dedicated to this issue,” TD Padráig Rice said this morning before inviting Gloster to address the committee.

The Walker report was commissioned in 2015 and completed in 2018.

It reviewed 18 maternity cases from the hospital between 2008 and 2014 where there were adverse outcomes including the death of infants and serious injury.

This included a number of babies who suffered due to a lack of oxygen to the brain in the course of their births.

That report identified several major failures in how the ward was being staffed and governed, and made a number of key recommendations, including that there should be a fully integrated maternity service between Portiuncula and University Hospital Galway, and an increase in consultant-led staffing levels.

Following that report the HSE opted to introduce a shared clinical leadership model that saw one clinical director overseeing both sites. It meant that consultant time was being organised between the two hospitals.

That model proved difficult in practice and was scrapped last year, with separate clinical directors put in place in both sites.

Today Gloster insisted that the Walker report recommendations have been largely implemented at Portiuncula but TDs strongly pushed back.

Fianna Fáil TD Martin Daly, who is a GP in the region, told Gloster that there is “serious disquiet” locally about what has happened in the Portiuncula maternity unit.

“I’m looking here today, I don’t see the regional clinical director for obstetrics for the HSE North West, I don’t see the associate clinical director for the unit here, that would have been helpful,” he started out.

“When Walker made the recommendations around joint governance, there was a very clear pathway that that there was to be a post with three days and two days alternative weeks shared with the martnerity unit in Portiuncula and that never happened… so they spent an average of six hours there, and you get the feeling from talking to people that it was a box ticking exercise.

“I’ve been told Walker was fully implemented, which isn’t true, because why do all the same issues arise again in 2025 if it was implemented, if it was it certainly wasn’t sustained,” he said.

Daly was told that the governance model recommended in the Walker report was implemented and when it “wasn’t working” it was stood down.

“All we are asking for is that the resources that were recommended be put in place so that the 1300 women that continue to deliver in Portiuncula [each year] have a safe service,” he said.

High risk pregnancy cases have been diverted from the smaller unit to Galway’s main hospital since 2018 and the criteria for that pathway was expanded this year so that all women in the category would have their treatment transferred.

Gloster repeatedly told politicians that he cannot say when high risk cases will be treated in the Portiuncula unit again.

He was also questioned on whether the HSE is considering closing the unit.

“I can absolutely and categorically say to you that I have not received one ounce of direction from the Minister, from the Department or from the Department of the HSE to in any way alter or reconfigure services in the region, including Portiuncula,” Gloster said.

“So closing the unit is off the table?” he was asked.

You would close a unit if it continues to be unsafe, if it doesn’t improve… I don’t believe that’s going to be the case here,” Gloster said.

Gloster said that the Health Minister and the HSE are committed to the full resumption of services at Portiuncula at a time when it is safe to do so.