TDs back redress campaign for former Neary patients

A CAMPAIGN to secure justice for 35 female victims of disgraced obstetrician Michael Neary has been backed by cross-party TDs.

The former patients of the Drogheda consultant say they were betrayed by former health minister Mary Harney, who reneged on a pledge to address compensation for the women before resigning last week.

Politicians from all major parties vowed yesterday at a press conference in Dublin with former patients to establish a compensation fund of possibly up to €3 million within the next 12 months.

Many of the women were excluded from the original redress scheme, because the procedures done to them were not on the compensation list or because they were over the age of 40.

Former patients yesterday spoke of their anger and disgust at being left out of a redress scheme, 12 years since it emerged that Dr Neary had unnecessarily removed women’s wombs.

Marie Raeburn, 59, whose womb and ovaries were wrongly removed by Dr Neary, said: “It’s so hard to understand why Mary Harney, as a woman, could say we are not expanding the redress.”

Ms Raeburn, a mother-of-two, does not qualify for the redress scheme because she was three days over 40 at the time of the surgery.

A total of 35 women have been excluded from the Lourdes redress scheme on the basis a ministerial order is needed to change the criteria for compensation.

TDs yesterday said that if they entered office after the general election, they would move to establish a fund for the remaining patients. Labour’s Jan O’Sullivan said: “This is not going to open any floodgates. This is a limited number of women.”

But a spokeswoman for the support group Patient Focus, Catriona Molloy, also warned the former patients did not want to deal with a “waft of bureaucracy again” with the Department of Health over a possible extension of the scheme.

The Department of Health yesterday said it and current Health Minister Mary Coughlan stood over the agreement for the original redress scheme.