The Health Service Executive in the northeast is about to appoint a consultant to carry out an external review of the death of a baby born in a birthing pool at Cavan General Hospital in February. The cause of the baby's death is not yet known.
An internal review found that "there was no cause for concern with the care during pregnancy, labour and birth".
However, the northeastern HSE has decided to suspend the use of the pools for birth as a precautionary measure, pending the results of the external review and the postmortem.
The baby was born in late February in the birthing pool facility of the midwifery-led unit at the hospital.
"Complications with the baby arose following delivery," a HSE spokeswoman said.
"The baby was transferred to a Dublin hospital where unfortunately the baby died. The HSE would like to offer sincere sympathy to the family."
The spokeswoman said the use of birthing pools for pain relief during labour would continue but the women would not give birth in the pools until more information on this case was available.
She said it was difficult to say when the results of the external review would be available as it had not yet started.
The northeastern HSE was the first health board area to provide the birthing pool facility in two of its hospitals - Cavan and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda. Up to last week, about 40 babies had been born in the birthing pool in Drogheda and 10 were born in the Cavan hospital.
University College Hospital Galway gives women the option of using birthing pools for the early stages of labour but not for the actual birth.
It is understood that the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin is also going to introduce birthing pools to help with pain relief during labour.
The use of birthing pools is said to reduce pain, relax muscles and reduce women's stress during labour.
Yesterday, the Home Birth Association of Ireland said its thoughts were with the parents of the baby who had died.
Krysia Lynch, spokeswoman for the group, stressed that the cause of the baby's death was not yet known and she said people should not jump to judgment until the full facts were known.
Ms Lynch said there were about 500 home births a year but it was very difficult to know how many of these had used birthing pools.
Some women might have planned a water birth but it might not have happened for a variety of reasons, including a quick delivery.
She said water births were commonplace in the UK and more than half of all hospital births used water during labour.
