Change the law to help families - Delays in birth payments

THE sight of careworn and exhausted — physically and emotionally — parents of children damaged at birth on the steps of our courts is far too common.

Parents, often brought so close to the very edge of defeat that they can only speak through a proxy, temper their relief at their final victory so the great struggle to get to that point is hardly mentioned. But it is often etched in faces old before their time and drained of the joy of life by the struggle to do all they can for a disadvantaged child. That struggle is sometimes exacerbated by long, drawn out litigation taken on our behalf. This implicates us all in this unnecessary marathon through of the legal system’s gauntlet.

The President of the High Court, Mr Justice Peter Kelly, speaking in a case where he approved a final €8m lump sum payment for Jamie Patterson, aged 13, who had sued Coombe Hospital over the circumstances of his birth, criticised this “shameful” situation. It is “really shameful” he said that legislation has not been introduced to allow periodic payments to the catastrophically injured who settle their medical negligence actions. He also pointed out that Jamie’s was the third case in three weeks where the parents have asked for a final lump sum payment to bring an end to drawn-out litigation. We can do little enough to reverse the great tragedy in these challenged lives but we can, by changing the law, make the challenge more bareable. Let’s get on with it.