Confrontational HSE must try different tact

Earlier this week, a Tipperary family received two apologies in the High Court after a father and son died 16 months apart as a result of poor medical care.

The court approved settlements in the case of the Lonergan family from Cashel after the deaths of 74-year-old Eddie Lonergan in 2013 and his son PJ the following year.

Eddie Lonergan took his own life a day after he was discharged from the psychiatric unit of St Luke’s Hospital in Kilkenny. Sixteen months later, 39-year-old PJ died after he was wrongly discharged from South Tipperary General Hospital.

Yesterday, Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, apologised in the High Court for a “deficit in care” to a baby boy who died hours after his skull was fractured during birth. Counsel said the circumstances of Evan Tuite’s delivery were “horrific” — and he died in his mother’s arms 12 hours after his birth in 2012.

Evan’s parents, Fiona Tuite and Ivan Murphy, of Rose Hall, Drogheda, said in a statement delivered at the Four Courts, that this should not have happened to Evan or any child.

In each of these cases, and in many more like them, bereaved families have to fight the HSE tooth and claw before a settlement is reached.

This seems unnecessarily confrontational and expensive, and, worst of all, an emotional marathon that very few of could comfortably endure. Surely we can find a better way to resolve these issues.