Hospital Services Seanad Éireann — 2023-04-25 ============================================================ Vincent P. Martin (GP), Nominated by the Taoiseach We also commend and are grateful to the hard-working staff in the Coombe but there is an avoidable, unnecessary situation. With respect, there is no comfort in the Minister of State's reply so the campaign will go on. I urge the Minister of State to use his ministerial influence to give us this assurance. He gets it. He is a dad of young children. He knows this is unnecessary. He knows that the Celbridge and Newbridge services, while good, are midwife-led, although they are supported by consultants in the Coombe. That is an entirely different thing from the consultant-led service which existed for years, efficiently and well-utilised, in Naas General Hospital until it was removed. There is no evidence of any consultation, so until I hear otherwise, it is totally unsatisfactory. I and the people of Kildare will ratchet up our campaign in the coming weeks to ensure we get back that service. It is a sustainable, safe and proper service that, in an unjustified way, was taken from the people of Kildare. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2023-04-25/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:48+00:00 Sitting date: 2023-04-25