Report to back €34m payout to symphysiotomy victims

A long-awaited Government report into “barbaric” operations on thousands of pregnant women between the 1940s and 1984 will recommend at least €34m in State payouts to victims when it is published today.

Health Minister Simon Harris will seek Government approval for the publication of the two-year investigation into the scale of symphysiotomies during the weekly cabinet meeting this morning.

The report, by former High Court judge Maureen Harding Clark, was commissioned by Mr Harris’s predecessor Leo Varadkar in late 2014 in a bid to highlight the full extent of cases involved.