Symphysiotomy survivors deserve better treatment

The continuing refusal of this Government to deal fairly with survivors of symphysiotomy now stands exposed (Sept 26).

While Minister Reilly’s quest for a judge to mediate with survivors may appear laudable, it cloaks the Government’s failure to advance our private members’ bill setting aside the statute of limitations and the minister’s refusal to entertain our offer of a negotiated settlement based on members’ legal actions. ‘Mediation’ is a calculated attempt to foil those actions.

It also serves to conceal: the Government has no intention of awarding damages for personal injuries due to medical negligence in these cases. Other victims of medical negligence were treated differently, those infected through contaminated blood with Hepatitis C or HIV, and (many of) those whose reproductive organs were gratuitously removed at the Lourdes Hospital. There, there was an admission of wrongdoing. Here, there is none.

The official line is that there has been no medical negligence, or very little. The minister has decided to suppress the final report on symphysiotomy commissioned by his own department, blindfolding survivors who do not know whether the truth about these operations will ever be acknowledged. While survivors are led to believe that mediation is an open-ended process, the outcome is predetermined: the minister indicated on Aug 1 that ‘redress’ payments will be far less than the court awards made in symphysiotomy cases, that monies will be paid in instalments and that legal advisors will be excluded from the process.

While this exclusion is spun as virtuous cost-cutting, as in, ‘no money for [greedy] lawyers’, it masks the fact that survivors are being denied the right of legal representation. Representation corrects the imbalance between the powerless and the powerful. Until recently, the State paid for representation over and above the awards made to victims of medical negligence (and institutional abuse). That right was first abrogated under the Magdalene scheme. It, too, was preceded by mediation with a Government-appointed judge.

Marie O’Connor

Chairperson

Survivors of Symphysiotomy (SoS)

Dublin 7