Professor Richard Greene:

Yes. A baby might have a heartbeat that is gone in one minute or give a gasp and show no further sign of life. Where any such sign of life presents, it is considered to be a neonatal death.

There were several questions about reporting and registration. Registration of stillbirths is required where the woman is at more than 24 weeks gestation or the baby weighs more than 500g. Reporting in this regard comes either from the likes of the ESRI or in the audit-type work we do. There is also a requirement for certification of death, which occurs at some subsequent point. The requirement is that the doctor complete the death certificate for the baby, but it then may be given to the parents to submit to the General Register Office. The report on Portlaoise hospital suggested we review this procedure. Dr. Crowley and I met the chief medical officer, CMO, and subsequently the healthcare pricing office, HPO, to discuss the issue. As a consequence of these discussions, we have agreed to follow in the future the World Health Organization definition, which is that baby deaths will be documented in the statistics if the baby weighs more than 500g.

A question was asked about the publication of reports for 2013. The perinatal statistics for that year were published in December 2014 by the HPO. The 2013 clinical audit of the data we receive will be available later this year. It requires a lot of clinical information and there is sometimes a delay in the data for final cause of death arising from referrals to the Coroner Service.