Leo Varadkar denies Ireland’s maternity services in ‘crisis’

Health Minister Leo Varadkar has denied Ireland’s maternity services are in crisis, despite revelations the system suffered 67 “extreme incidents” last year, resulting in babies dying or having long-term disabilities.

The State Claims Agency (SCA) had flagged the incidents across all maternity hospitals in Ireland last year, in addition to three other “major” medical errors.

Details were revealed by RTÉ’s Prime Time programme on Thursday.

The SCA information has led to concern among families affected by the recent Portlaoise maternity hospital scandal that the issues — which led to their babies dying, including a failure of officials to accept and address the problems — are being repeated nationwide.

However, Mr Varadkar rejected any suggestions of a maternity service “crisis”. He said while shortcomings exist, Ireland remains one of the safest places in the world to have a baby and the number of incidents reported represents about 0.1% of pregnancies every year.

The comments, however, were challenged by Roisin Molloy, who lost newborn son Mark at Portlaoise in 2012 and is now a member of the Government’s national maternity strategy group.

Ms Molloy said the 67 extreme incidents last year and the recent scandals in Portlaoise occurred because problems were “allowed to continue on recklessly for a number of years without any strategy or plan”.

The Prime Time disclosures follow a series of recent Irish maternity scandals, including May’s Hiqa report into long-term failures to act in Portlaoise; the 2012 death of Savita Halappanavar at Galway University Hospital; 2011 miscarriage misdiagnoses scandals in Dublin and the deaths of pregnant women in Sligo.