‘Surgery delay caused father’s wedding death’

The son of a 70-year-old man who last weekend collapsed at his daughter’s wedding and later died from a heart attack, yesterday blamed lengthening HSE waiting lists for his father’s death.

Last Saturday, Clare man Tommy O’Brien collapsed on the dance floor of the Bunratty Castle Hotel in front of his daughter Karen, only hours after walking her up the aisle at Quin Church.

Efforts to revive Mr O’Brien at the scene failed and he was later pronounced dead at University Hospital Limerick.

Yesterday, the O’Brien family gathered at the same church for the funeral mass.

Mr O’Brien was described by son Eoin as a great dad, a great husband, and doting granddad.

In an emotional address to a packed congregation, his son said: “The truth of the matter though is that Tommy shouldn’t be laying in front of us here today. He was due for a heart bypass operation last September and it was continually postponed due to waiting lists — well that waiting list is now one name short and we are down a wonderful man.

“Our anger at losing dad in this way is hard to quantify. There are political figures in the congregation today. We can accept your sympathies and your kind words, but we shouldn’t have to accept this level of health service in a first world country.”

To the politicians he said: “To you I say ‘please do more’.”

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Celebrant Fr Iggy McCormack said Mr O’Brien’s wife, Noreen, told him that it was one of her husband’s dearest wishes to walk his only daughter Karen up the aisle on her wedding day.

Remarking that the father-of-two was “a kind man”, Fr McCormack said there had been some concern that if Mr O’Brien had been called for his operation, he would not have been able to walk Karen up the aisle.

“Saturday last can be described for the O’Brien family as a bitter-sweet day because we had the most beautiful wedding ceremony here at 2 o’clock. My abiding memory of Tommy is a man walking up his beloved daughter, Karen here to the altar — a man who looked enormously proud and satisfied as he did that.”

Fr McCormack said: “It was a beautiful intimate ceremony — about 60 guests, that is considered small by modern standards but all the more intimate as a result. It was as if every person here was fully present to that moment.”

Items brought to the altar included a hurley, a soccer ball, the jersey of local soccer club Rhine Rovers, a deck of cards, and a set of darts.

In his opening remarks to the congregation, his son Eoin said: “Four days ago, I had to make a speech on behalf of Tommy who was father of the bride. That was a speech I was happy to make. This one is very different.”

He said: “Dad made the front page of the newspapers in a famous GAA photograph in 1995 when he was wrapped around Ollie Baker celebrating an historic day in Croke Park.

“He would be utterly mortified to know that he was making headlines again and I suppose the nature of his passing made it inevitable.”

In remarks that brought laughter, Eoin said: “Tommy wasn’t all sweetness and light as you all know. There are probably a lot of soccer and GAA refs around the county breathing a sigh of relief today. He was sent from the sidelines more often than José Mourinho.”

Eoin said his father “as he described himself, was a simple man with simple needs. Doing the garden and bits about the house, going to hurling and soccer matches, drinking pints and he might have a good old row on a Sunday evening playing cards with his buddies just to book- end the week”.

The HSE did not return calls for a comment.

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