Rally in Newry for our maternity service!

Sunday 25th October 2026
Marcus Square
Newry
Time : 2:30 pm

The goal here is to have more than 10,000 people in attendance. Maybe even double that!

Round up as many supporters as possible and give a big ugly salute to the Southern Trust Management and let them know that...

• Newry says NO! to the closing of Birthing at Daisy Hill.
• Newry says NO! to the removal of Maternity Services.
• Newry says NO! to putting mothers and babies at risk.

These decisions are firmly landing at the door of the Southern Trust management team; 3 men and 3 women hold these seats,

You will be held accountable for any harm or injuries that happen to these women or babies,

These are mothers, daughters, granddaughters, someone's wife, someone's mum.

Southern Trust Management are endangering the lives of mothers and babies.

Southern Trust and those above them are telling the general public lies.

When you underfeed a service, under-resource it deliberately, under-upgrade it, and throw money at everywhere else apart from Daisy Hill Maternity, what do u think happens?

You have a duty of care to the mothers and babies of Newry and Mourne!

The public meeting heard from the people that:

• The general public has no confidence in the management of the Southern Trust
• The stated position of needing 8 Consultants to run the service is unsubstantiated, not explained and not justified. Consultants are rarely present at the births and can easily give their opinions via telephone or video link
• It's more dangerous to have mothers in medical emergencies to travel to Craigavon than to remain in Daisy Hill
• It's safer and faster to ask Consultants to drive to Daisy Hill when they're needed.
• There was a mass walk-out of consultants previously because of the way the service is managed
• Consultants don't want to accept the position because of the rota and working conditions being asked of them
• The roles were advertised nationally and internationally, but little evidence of this can be found, and the roles listed on the BMA jobs page "expired" months ago - there is no active recruitment to fix the problem.
• Strong allegations of gag orders and NDAs being used against existing Maternity Ward staff
• BBC and other media outlets being told about the Maternity Ward closure before the staff - the first the staff heard about it was when the media were outside reporting.
• Keycards for Maternity staff were added to Craigavon Hospital weeks ago, even before this "decision has been made" - without informing staff.
• Craigavon is already unable to accept mothers from Newry currently because they're too busy; how will they be able to handle over 1,700 more births? Mothers being further transferred to Downe Hospital and Belfast. Craigavon Hospital will be crippled by this decision.
• Suggestions that mothers will ultimately be giving birth on the hard shoulder or at the side of the road.
• An understanding that mothers and babies will die and others will suffer serious harm because of this proposal.
• Daisy Hill serves patients from as far away as Castleblaney and Annalong, 1.5 hours of driving away.
• There is no suggestion of an increased provision of ambulance cover, which often takes over 3 hours to arrive to some calls. All categories of calls in the Newry area are over double the target arrival time. This extra demand will cripple Newry's ambulance cover, leading again to further deaths and harm.
• We'd like to see a level of intervention from the Dublin government on this.
• This decision has not yet been officially made, but behind the scenes we've heard that Robbie Butler will execute this decision and the closing date of the hospital will be Halloween 2026.

The views above were all aired in public at the Canal Court public meeting.

This doesn't just affect Maternity. It affects everyone. Spread the word. This needs to be stopped.