Maternity hospitals staffing: 'Knee-jerk reaction is to ask for report'

The head of a maternity hospital is hitting out at the slow pace of improvements in his sector.

Dr Sam Coulter Smith from the Rotunda in Dublin is highlighting the lack of intensive care units at maternity hospitals in the city, and says 10 of his sickest patients had to travel by ambulance for care elsewhere in 2013.

There have been several reports on how to fix the issue in recent years, including those recommending changes in light of the death of Savita Halappanavar.

In making his comments, Dr Coulter Smith drew a comparison to this week's renewed controversy over Ireland's homeless crisis.

"There's lots of parallels - something bad happens and the knee-jerk reaction is to ask for a report," he said.

"We've been quite good at producing guidelines from individual instances, but nobody's looking at the overall picture (and) how we get back to a point where we have a suitable number of obstetricians and a suitable number of midwives."