The chair of the Medical Council's Ethics Committee will ask the council to refer its report on consultant obstetrician Dr Michael Neary to the Director of Public Prosecutions if the Minister for Health fails to do so within three weeks.
The Medical Council has been asked to meet in three weeks to examine the practice of obstetrics at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, in the light of its Fitness to Practise Committee report on Dr Neary.
Dr Neary was found guilty of professional misconduct, and struck off the Medical Register this week.
He has a right to appeal the council's decision to the High Court within 21 days of Tuesday's decision.
Ms Geraldine Feeney, a lay member of the council and chair of its Ethics Committee, told The Irish Times last night: "If the Minister for Health has not taken this issue further by then, I will be asking the Medical Council to refer the report to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
"It [the Neary report] is bigger than the Medical Council - there are more serious issues arising from the report, and there is an onus on the Medical Council to send it on to another authority."
A motion asking the council to directly refer the Neary investigation report to the DPP was defeated at Tuesday's council meeting. Five members supported the motion, but a majority voted against. The Medical Council has 25 members, all but two of whom are doctors.
Ms Feeney, who is a Fianna Fáil member of the Seanad, said: "I'm not a medic, but when someone carries out a major operation they do not do it by themselves. He had other disciplines and colleagues present. Why were questions not asked by these people?"
Referring to the fact that the student midwives who were the first to indicate their concern about the high rate of Caesarean hysterectomy at the hospital did so only in the context of a general discussion with management in 1998, Ms Feeney said: "I am not sure that the problem is confined to obstetrics, and that it could not happen in another discipline of medicine."
She called for the Medical Council and the Department of Health to come together to strengthen clinical governance in the health service and agree stronger systems of competence assurance for doctors.