Health Minister Leo Varadkar has said Ireland was never the safest country in the world in which to give birth.

“I think there may have been a complacency in Ireland in the past quite frankly about the quality of our maternity services,” Mr Varadkar said.

The claim of Ireland being level with other developed nations in terms of safety for pregnant women was never backed up by proper statistics, Mr Varadkar said.

Responding to a recent report which found that Ireland now has a higher rate of maternal death than the UK, with maternal death rates here up 22%, Mr Varadkar said Ireland can only now begin to measure the safety of maternity services.

The traditional method of measurement, CSO figures, have shown Ireland as having a low rate of maternal deaths. However, this method was prone to overlooking a number of deaths. The Irish Times notes today that the death of Savita Halappanavar, from septicemia, would not have been counted under the CSO system.

“Really the statistics never supported that view very well and I’m glad that we do now have these MDE statistics, which calculate numbers in the same way that the UK does,” he said.

“And what that does show, which is what I consistently say, is that our maternal mortality and perinatal mortality are on a par with the rest of the developed world,” he added.

The Confidential Maternal Death Enquiry, based in University College Cork, has, since 2009, been collating data on maternal deaths from a broader range of sources than the previous CSO system, in the same way figures are recorded in the UK.

However, he said Ireland is now able to compete with other countries to become the safest place to give birth.

“Now that complacency is gone we’re going to strive to increase it and prove it - which is why we now have more consultants than ever before, more midwives than ever before, at a time when our birth-rate is falling,” he said.