Date set for mother and baby inquest
A report into the deaths of Madeline O’Neill, 40, and nine-year-old Lauren, which was published last month, was highly critical of the Eastern and Western Health Boards in the north for failing to follow basic procedures.
Ms O’Neill had told her doctor, a private counsellor and a psychiatrist at the Knockbracken Mental Health Hospital in Belfast, about her plan to kill her daughter and take her own life just weeks before she did so.
However, no one told her estranged husband John or gave him the opportunity to protect his daughter, said the report.
He has said he would be “haunted forever” that his daughter’s death could have been easily prevented.
The north’s senior coroner, John Leckey, said at a preliminary hearing in Belfast that about 20 witnesses — most health professionals — would be called to give evidence at an inquest starting on September 1 which he expected to last a month.
Ms O’Neill had been treated by both the Eastern and Western Health Boards and had left the Gransha Hospital in Derry two weeks before her death.
She and Lauren were found in their former family home in Carryduff, Co Down, on July 12, 2005.
Ms O’Neill was found hanged and a postmortem examination decided her daughter had probably been smothered.
