Health minister shares son’s neonatal brain injury as medical negligence overhaul questioned
Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has spoken in personal terms about her child who suffered a neonatal injury during a discussion on compensation payouts by the State. Picture: Moya Nolan
“It is important that I declare an interest in this to the chair," she said at the health committee.
"I have a child who had a neonatal brain injury and who goes through the State Claims process. So I am not just a minister for health but a parent in precisely that situation.
"It is very important I disclose that although it is quite private. So I do have personal understanding of this particular process and the interim steps and the way it is managed.”
She was answering questions from Fianna Fáil TD Martin Daly who is also a GP.
Dr Daly queried when reforms advised by a working group led by Professor Rhona Mahony will be implemented.
These include pre-action protocols and a special court to hear medical negligence cases.
The minister said she met women who took part in research for that report by University College Cork and none had wanted to go down the legal route.
“I recognise that report but I also recognise it was chaired by somebody who was a master of a maternity hospital where I repeatedly see events being presented in the courts, including my own event presented in the court,” she said.
“I have questions and I had questions at the time. I don’t believe it is a panacea necessarily.”
The minister questioned accountability in hospitals run by a board, saying “real accountability is considered in a different way”.
There are dedicated medical negligence lists in courts already, she added.
Ms Carroll MacNeill acknowledged mediation is in place but described it as “litigation by a different name".
"We don’t have a culture yet of real acknowledgement of wrongdoing, of anticipating mental health implications of that," she said.
“What I really want to see from maternity hospitals as leaders in this field is a very different attitude to openness, accountability, investigation and responsiveness and proactivity in wrapping arms around women and babies who had had very bad outcomes.”
She said she has tried to begin work on this issue but indicated her workload contains many urgent items.
Last month, an Irish Hospital Consultants’ Association conference heard changes to how compensation in medical-negligence cases is paid will be implemented “within weeks” as long-awaited reform takes effect.
It also heard next year could also see the long-delayed introduction of better information sharing and mediation between the legal teams of patients and hospitals — to reduce the need for court proceedings.
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