Coombe faces multimillion-euro bill for boy’s catastrophic injuries at birth

The Coombe Women’s Hospital is facing a multimillion-euro bill after a High Court judge ruled it is liable for catastrophic injuries suffered by a boy minutes after his birth at the Dublin hospital.

Had Eoin Dunne been effectively ventilated nine minutes after birth rather than at 17 minutes, he would probably not have suffered his devastating injuries, Ms Justice Mary Irvine found. The delay was unacceptable and the hospital was negligent in failing to ensure the child received the type of intubation and ventilation “mandated in the first 10 minutes of his life”.

What might be relevant to the failure of a senior member of the paediatric staff able to carry out an intubation to attend within the first five minutes of Eoin’s life was that, although an “extremely high” number of babies are delivered at the Coombe — about 8,000 a year — there was only one paediatric registrar on duty, the judge remarked.