Up to 14,000 Irish patients a year may be injured or killed as a result of preventable mistakes by doctors and others working in the health care system.
Some 6,500 of them may be victims of outright medical negligence and 2,000 of them may be dying as a direct result of avoidable medical errors.
These figures, revealed on RTÉ's Prime Time programme last night, are based on the application to this State of data from a 1999 study by Harvard University.
Harvard studied more than 30,000 hospital patient files to come up with its figures which the programme said are being used to set international standards for measuring how many people are injured and even killed each year as a direct result of their medical care.
The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, has stated publicly that the Harvard findings on medical error could quite readily be applied to the Republic.
The Irish Patients Association said this meant up to 20,000 patients had died over the past 10 years not from their illnesses but from preventable errors.
"We request all members of Government including the Opposition parties to make health care safety a key priority," said the association's chairman, Mr Stephen McMahon. "At present it does not have the same focus as death by road accidents, suicides or other accidental causes.
But the secretary general of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, Mr Finbar Fitzpatrick, said there were 4.4 million patient attendances at Irish hospitals every year.
This meant the 6,500 people who may be victims of outright medical negligence every year represented just 0.15 per cent of patient attendances. He said the compensation culture meant doctors took every reasonable step to avoid adverse events.
Prime Time spoke to a number of people who had been victims of the health care system. They included Mr Alan O'Gorman (23) who was rushed to hospital last year with severe stomach cramps. Doctors removed his appendix, diagnosed a perforated ulcer and took a biopsy of stomach tissue as a precaution.
The biopsy, he was told, indicated he had stomach cancer. Most of his stomach was removed but when it was examined there was no cancer. His biopsy had been mixed up with another patient. The error has left him seriously and permanently injured.
The programme said that very few of those who were injured sue. Figures from the State Claims Agency indicated there were about 550 claims a year.
A number of those interviewed called for an independent ombudsman to take over the investigation of complaints from the Medical Council. The calls came from both Patient Focus and Prof Muiris Fitzgerald, dean of the faculty of medicine at University College Dublin.
The Medical Council told the programme as many as 600 Irish doctors could be below par with 80 giving considerable cause for concern. However no mechanism existed to identify them.