The Association for Improvements in Maternity Services Ireland (AIMS Ireland) has called for the HSE to immediately conduct a full review of maternity services as recommended in the HIQA report.

Krysia Lynch, Co-chair of AIMS Ireland, said the findings of the report indicated a failure at all strata of responsibility to provide basic levels of adequate and appropriate care to Savita Halappanavar which would have saved her life.

"What is also of grave concern to AIMS Ireland is the number of failures at national level identified in the report, including timely access to maternity services, inadequate staffing levels for safe care, a maternity care model that hasn't been revised in 59 years, a lack of accountability and governance, an absence of reviews of clinical practices in units, and the lack of a national maternity services strategy."

Ms Lynch said our midwife-to patient staff ratios are unsafe.

She said Irish ratios are not in lime with recommendations and were seen to be contributing factors into the deaths of Tania McCabe, Bimbo Onanuga, and now, Savita Halappanavar.

"Regional variations in obstetric interventions across Ireland essentially present women with a ‘geographic lottery' in terms of their maternity care. There is no standardised care," Ms Lynch said.

She said the HSE and Department of Health had seen numerous recommendations and reports of unsafe practice in Irish maternity services in the recent decade, 'all of which have fallen on deaf ears'.

"Ireland purports to be one of the safest countries to have a baby, yet these incidents of gross neglect continue,' Ms Lynch said.