‘We never thought we’d be fighting for a doctor’

TWO mothers. Between them they have three children with special needs; two in wheelchairs, one tube-fed - all desperately dependent on their doctor who is about to depart.

If it sounds like a tragedy, it is. Not just for Mary O’Flynn and her six-year-old son Ricky, or for his cousins, 12-year-old Mary Rose and 14-year-old Christopher Wyse, but for the parents of 12,000 other children with learning and developmental disabilities.

All are dependent on the services of Dr David Coghlan, consultant paediatrician specialising in children with special needs at Mercy University Hospital (MUH) in Cork.