MR. PATRICK O'BRIENI Leg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Irish Local Government Board still issue an official query list, which gives the members of a dispensary committee a loophole to appoint as a dispensary midwife an untrained woman, if the medical officer of the district is satisfied as to her fitness; if he will take steps to have this query list withdrawn at once; and, in order to protect the lives of poor lying-in women against the dangers of puerperal fever, if he will secure that in future no dispensary midwife shall be appointed unless she has been properly trained and certificated in the methods provided by modern science?
§ MR. GERALD BALFOURThe query in the form of particulars to which the hon. Member apparently refers, inquires whether, if the candidate is not provided with a certificate of competency from a lying-in hospital, the medical officer is satisfied as to her competency and fitness for the appointment. The Local Government Board are most anxious that properly-qualified midwives should be appointed in every case, and in a circular addressed to dispensary committees in August, 1896, the Board suggested that midwives who had not already undergone a course of instruction in some public lying-in hospitals should be afforded facilities for obtaining such instruction. The salaries attaching to the office of dispensary midwife are not sufficient in many instances to attract certificated candidates, and I cannot see my way to withdraw the query referred to. I may add it is by no means certain that a sufficient number of certificated candidates would be forthcoming, even if the query were withdrawn.