‘All you are meeting are walls, barriers and lies’- Families of babies who died at Midlands Regional Hospital

The parents of one of the babies who died at the Midlands Regional Hospital in Portlaoise said it was unfortunate it had taken so long for action to be taken.

Roisín and Mark Molloy had their fifth child, also named Mark, in the hospital’s maternity unit in January 2012. He died soon after being born due to lack of oxygen.

Mr Molloy said he was still very angry with the HSE. He said the family had been highlighting the issues about the maternity services at the most senior level in the HSE since 2012. “Be it through incompetence, arrogance, I don’t know, but they decided to ignore the facts that babies were dying and we were highlighting these concerns to them.”

Mr Molloy said he was delighted that the inquiry was going to extend to those in the HSE whom he believed should have taken action. “It is a bitter-sweet day for us. When all is said and done, we will visit a grave in the morning. No matter what work we did, we are not getting Mark back tomorrow. While you can get some comfort that other babies will go home safely as a result of this, it is still a sad day for us.”

Asked if what he heard from James Reilly, the health minister, and the chief medical officer, Tony Holohan was enough, Mr Molloy said it was certainly a good starting point.

He said he was happy to let the regulatory bodies deal with hospital staff who failed to deal with patient safety issues and consider their positions.

Ms Molloy said they were aware of other babies who had died in Portlaoise Hospital since Mark’s death.

“It’s harrowing to think that Mark was not the last baby,” she said. It also made them guilty that they did not go public sooner.

She said the burden of responsibility had been lifted from them now. They warned anyone attending Portlaoise Hospital about the practices and policies there. She said there will have to be a commitment from the hospital and the HSE to change the culture of the hospital and provide the best service possible.

Ms Molloy said they never wanted to go public and only decided to do so when the case of Savita Halappanavar, a pregnant woman who died after being denied an abortion, became public: “We knew Mark should not have died. We knew about the other baby deaths but we did not want to go public.”

However, they ended up battling with the HSE to get their baby’s death acknowledged as an avoidable death, that it should not have happened. “The HSE met us with a wall of resistance,” said Ms Molloy, adding the cost to her family had been immense.

She was not surprised that Dr Reilly became emotional during the launch of the report by the Department of Health.

She said an attempt had been made by hospital members to put baby Mark into the boot of a taxi and a letter from a senior member of staff had stated that “it had lived for less than a minute” when referring to her son. “They had no respect for our children; they had no respect for us as a family and what they had done to us and they had no respect for people who are entitled to a good service.”

Shauna Keyes, who lost her son, Joshua, in 2009 in similar circumstances, said she felt vindicated and could start to feel good about herself again.

She said there had never been an investigation into how her son died. She had an assurance from the HSE that such an investigation would start next week and that it was expected to take two months.

“At that point I will finally have answers from the HSE. It has been a very frustrating four years; all you are meeting are walls, barriers and lies.

“People do not deserve to be treated like that. They have had a hard enough time and need to know the truth, whatever the cost.”

Ms Keyes said she had an awful lot of hopes and dreams for herself and her son. “As a result of being lied to, my life had been turned upside down. I thought I could not carry children. I blamed Joey [the father of her child] and he blamed me. I feel as if my whole life has been on hold still to this day.”

Ms Keyes said she wanted a proper apology from the HSE and to know exactly what the apology was for. She did not accept the HSE’s apology on the night the issue was aired on RTÉ’s Prime Time because she felt it was not genuine. “It was just given out to cover their own backs.”

She said she would return to the hospital as a patient if all the recommendations were properly implemented. “It would be a very safe place to have a baby but, right now, it’s not.”