Surgeon recalls 'hard decision' before breast op on wife

A consultant surgeon charged with a €700,000 breast cancer insurance fraud said he made "a hard decision" when he chose to perform a lumpectomy on his wife while she lay conscious on an examination table in his clinic.

"A doctor is a human being and human beings can sometimes be happy and sometimes sad, sometimes laugh and sometimes cry, sometimes can be brave and sometimes can be a coward and I was scared," Dr Emad Massoud said in evidence in his defence at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court .