Efforts by several doctors' representatives on the Western Health Board to scrap a pilot project designed to support women who want to give birth at home have failed.
The plan is to go ahead, despite the concern of some doctors about the safety of home births, for both mothers and babies. It will be running by the end of this year.
The health board chief executive officer, Dr Sheelah Ryan, has confirmed it is national and health board policy to promote hospital delivery.
But she said the new initiative, which was approved in the board's 1999 service plan, was intended to make birthing safe for both babies and mothers who choose to exercise their right to have a home delivery.
More women are opting for home deliveries in the western counties. Latest statistics show a total of 27 women gave birth in their own homes in Galway, Mayo and Roscommon last year.
The health authorities' support for home birth comes in the form of a pilot project being implemented at University College Hospital Galway. The training of staff for the scheme has already started at UCHG, which will be co-ordinating the service in the west as part of a hospital outreach project. Initially, only Galway women can avail of the scheme.
When the plan was discussed at a monthly meeting of the Western Health Board, grave concerns were expressed by several doctors who questioned the wisdom of proceeding with the pilot project in Galway, regardless of the statutory obligation on the board to provide the service.
A Castlerea GP, Dr Greg Kelly, described home births as "a romantic notion". They were actually "an act of insanity", he said.
"There is a lot of propaganda suggesting it's OK to have a normal delivery at home; but normal delivery is a retrospective diagnosis.
"No obstetrician can predict a delivery will be normal and if complications arise outside a hospital environment, where is the point in having a midwife or a GP? No matter how well trained they are, they cannot do anything when complications arise."
He urged the Minister for Health to remove the statutory obligation on health boards to facilitate women who wanted to give birth at home.
Dr Jane McGauran, Ballina sloe's area medical officer, was also opposed to the scheme. Its success could only be measured in terms of whether or not lives were lost, she said.
Another GP, Dr Diarmuid McLoughlin, who is based in Swinford, described the pilot project as a "crazy" scheme and said the doctors he represented wanted no part of it.
Dr Ryan pointed out, however, that the health authorities' service plan would have to be amended if the scheme was rejected and she left members to consider this option.
Ms Margaret O'Riordan, from Moycullen in Galway, is one of only 12 independent midwives in this country and she has welcomed the pilot project. "It's high time the board recognised that it is the basic right of a child-bearing woman to be facilitated in having her baby at home if she wishes," she said.