'Our maternity system is broken': Campaigners demand Commission of Investigation into baby deaths

Aims Ireland CEO Krysia Lynch said: 'When mothers and babies do not survive, there is a red flag of gargantuan proportions that needs immediate attention.' Photo: Moya Nolan

Campaigners for better maternity services have launched a national campaign to get Taoiseach Simon Harris to hold a Commission of Investigation into avoidable mother and baby deaths in hospitals.

An alliance made up of Safer Births Ireland, Feileacain, Aims Ireland, and the Birth Rights Alliance formally launched their call for the inquiry at an event in Leinster House hosted by Social Democrats Health Spokesperson Roisin Shortall.

The alliance, which also includes medical negligence experts, lawyer Caoimhe Haughey and barrister Lisa Ann Wilkinson, wants maternity ward deaths and injuries since at least as far back as 2013 investigated.

The date has been picked as reforms in maternity care that followed the Portlaoise Baby Scandal came after a Department of Health look-back over deaths in Portlaoise Hospital between 2006 and 2012. Other reviews also took place around that period.

Members of the alliance say “history is repeating itself” and the State needs to find out why.

Safer Births Ireland and AIMS Ireland last year called on the health minister to do a basic look-back over 21 avoidable deaths that had featured in the Irish Examiner on December 18. The list of avoidable baby deaths has since grown to at least 45 since 2013.

In a statement ahead of the launch, the alliance said it “does not trust the minister to take this matter seriously”.

Five baby deaths in Portlaoise between 2006 and 2012 led to the Portlaoise baby scandal that broke on RTÉ in 2014. Such was the uproar that followed that the then-Health Minister, James O'Reilly, and the then-Chief Medical Officer, Dr Tony Holohan, went to Portlaoise to meet parents affected.

The reforms, reports, and recommendations that followed led to the country’s first maternity strategy.

Among the 45 avoidable baby deaths, six each happened in the Coombe and the Rotunda — between 2015 and 2020 — and five were in Our Lady of Lourdes, and four each in Portlaoise, St Luke's and Holles Street.

Safer Births Ireland co-founder Claire Cullen said: “If research based on publicly available information is anything to go by, at least 45 babies have died and at least 29 mothers have died since 2013.

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“Countless more mothers and babies have been injured and despite all the lessons the health services say are being learned, the same mistakes are happening. It really looks as if history is repeating itself.

“We believe a Commission of Investigation will not just highlight how our loved ones have died and continue to die but also tell us why they died.” 

Aims Ireland CEO Krysia Lynch said: “When mothers and babies do not survive, there is a red flag of gargantuan proportions that needs immediate attention. It’s not good enough for the Minister of Health to allow this situation to continue without an immediate independent inquiry.” 

Birth Rights Alliance Ireland’s Rachael Bermingham said: “Our maternity system is broken, leaving grieving families in its wake. Something needs to change, and it needs to change now.”