Baby security firm meets hospitals today

Experts from a firm installing baby security tag systems in the three Dublin maternity hospitals are to meet hospital staff today.

The Department of Health and the three hospitals have decided to pilot the new security measure in the Coombe Women's Hospital and introduce it later in Holles Street and the Rotunda hospitals.

A spokeswoman said the system at the Coombe should be functioning within a month. A spokeswoman for the National Maternity Hospital confirmed it was involved in the project. "The first line of security for any baby in a maternity hospital is their mother," Assistant Matron Maureen Fallon said.

The Coombe, like other maternity hospitals, runs a security protocol whereby only uniformed nurses are allowed to carry a baby around the hospital. "If anyone carrying a baby is not in uniform then they will be stopped," the spokeswoman said. Surveillance cameras are also used to monitor baby wards.

Senior hospital staff admit privately, however, that an abduction could still happen, and the new tagging system is intended to exclude that possibility.

The system is believed to be based on an electronic tag on the baby set to react to door sensors in the hospital.