{"id":504397,"date":"2026-06-17T13:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T13:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/504397\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T13:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T13:38:10","slug":"abolishing-private-maternity-care-is-not-a-solution-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/504397\/","title":{"rendered":"Abolishing private maternity care is not a solution \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Sir, \u2013 Equity in maternity care exists. There is no evidence that outcomes differ between public and private patients. What is at risk is choice.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Our public healthcare system delivers excellent care once patients gain access to it. The real challenge is capacity, overcrowding and waiting lists. Maternity care is different. No woman is asked to wait a few extra months to have her baby because the service is oversubscribed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Abolishing the private pathway will not create more beds, midwives or obstetricians. It will simply remove an option that many value, leaving women with fewer options and that is not progress. \u2013 Yours, etc,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">LISA DALY,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Rathfarnham,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Dublin 14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir, \u2013 Equity in maternity care exists. There is no evidence that outcomes differ between public and private&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[103,397,396,61,60],"class_list":["post-504397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}