Woman awarded €170k after stillbirth

A mother whose baby was stillborn after she was transferred 114km, from a Kerry hospital to Cork, in an ambulance that did not have the necessary blood on board, has been awarded €170,000 damages by the High Court.

What had happened to Fiona Ní Chonchubhair and her husband Stephen Cotter during this second pregnancy was “a disaster”, “the stuff of nightmares”, and must be “burnt into their memories as an example of the most disastrous incompetence”, Mr Justice Sean Ryan said yesterday.

The High Court heard during the two-day action that when the ambulance, sent from Kerry General Hospital in Tralee on a 114km, two-hour trip to Cork University Hospital, arrived with Ms Ní Chonchubhair, who was nearly 32 weeks pregnant and bleeding internally, it took another 15 or 20 minutes for the crew to locate the emergency department.