Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I often heard it said in the past that Ireland was the safest country in the world in which to give birth. However, the statistics never supported this. I am glad we now have the MDE statistics, which are calculated in the same way as in the UK. This shows, as I consistently say, that our maternal and perinatal mortality rates are on a par with the rest of the developed world. I am not so complacent as to think that we are the best in the world. I am pretty sure we are not. That is why we need to develop the maternity strategy and improve our services further. There may have been a complacency in Ireland in the past about the quality of our maternity services but that complacency is gone now. We are now striving to improve our services, which is backed up by the recruitment of more consultants and midwives than ever before at a time rate when our birth rate is falling. We still have a long way to go, in my view, to get to the point where every woman's pregnancy is managed by a senior decision-maker, be that a senior midwife or senior consultant. That is where I would like us to be in the future.

The point made by the Deputy in regard to ethnic minorities is well made. It is well recognised across the world that people from ethnic minority groups suffer inferior health outcomes. This is often down to issues around language and interpretation. It is also often a cultural issue or due to the fact that they tend to present later to doctors during the course of their illness or, in this case, during the course of their pregnancy. It is a matter we will continue to monitor. Again, this is by no means unique to Ireland but is a matter of which I am sure we need to remain conscious.

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