These Women Have Not Disappeared

In July 2025, high-risk pregnancies were moved out of Portiuncula.

That happened after external reviews into maternity and baby care at the Ballinasloe hospital.

There were twelve reviews. Eleven are now fully complete, and the twelfth is nearly done.

The reviews made 78 recommendations. The HSE says they're 98% fully complete. Two new clinical directors started on 1 September.

So a councillor asked the obvious question.

Cllr Dr Evelyn Francis Parsons said: "What is now standing in the way of reinstatement?"

The HSE's answer, at the West Regional Health Forum, was that there are no plans to bring the care back. "We have pathways in place that are working," said Ann Cosgrove, the integrated healthcare area manager for Galway and Roscommon.

Cllr Parsons had also asked how many women had been redirected, and where they went. The HSE couldn't say.

Her answer to that is the line that stays with you: "These women have not disappeared, they are receiving maternity care somewhere."

That's true. They're on the road somewhere. They're in a car at night with a hospital bag on the back seat, counting kilometres.

The CSO's data, she said, shows a real urban and rural divide in maternity services, with the west and north-west facing the longest median distances. "There is a great geographical burden placed on these women."

The HSE predicts that births at Portiuncula will fall by 10 to 15 per cent this year compared with 2025.

Safety has to come first. Nobody here argues with that.

But if the fixes are done, a mother in Roscommon deserves more than "pathways." She deserves a number, a name for where she'll go, and a reason she can understand.

A high-risk pregnancy is already a frightening thing. It means a scan that worried someone, or a baby who might come early.

Here's the question for the HSE and for all of us: if a system can't tell you where its most vulnerable mothers went, how sure can it be that they're all right?

Somewhere between Ballinasloe and Galway, a small heartbeat is making that journey tonight. It doesn't know about pathways. It only knows it needs to get there in time.

Source: Roscommon Herald, 21 Oct. Every fact and quote comes from that report.