Disabled boy’s family ‘can’t forgive HSE’ over court fight
€15m birth injury award
THE father of a catastrophically injured young boy has said he can forgive hospital mistakes – but not the way the health service then fights its victims ‘tooth and nail’ through the courts. Anthony McCallig was speaking after a €15million settlement was approved for his son, Eoin, who will be five this weekend.
Eoin, from Dunkineely in Co. Donegal, has quadriplegic cerebral palsy, and although cognitively unharmed, he has physical disabilities which affect all four limbs, and prevent him from walking or speaking. The High Court heard he suffered a lack of oxygen to his brain in the last 20 minutes before his birth at the Coombe Hospital in Dublin.
His counsel, Denis McCullough SC, said that although one doctor had directed that Eoin’s heart should be monitored in the womb and another had presumed it would be following a move to the delivery suite, the monitoring was not done consistently for almost two hours before his birth.
He argued that a trace of Eoin’s heartbeat would have shown decelerations occurring, and he could have been delivered at an earlier time and have been spared his devastating injuries.
He added that Eoin’s mother, Jean, had been considered high risk due to her medical history, A long battle: Parents Anthony and Jean McCallig which included breast cancer and Hodgkin’s Lymphona.
High Court president Judge Peter Kelly said there had been ‘error upon error’.
He noted that Eoin’s parents had sued the Coombe in December 2014 and that it had taken until June 2016 for the hospital to give its defence, which denied all the claims.
The hospital did not amend this defence until last month, when it admitted a failure to monitor Eoin’s heartbeat, but attributed the blame for his injuries to a problem with the placenta.
Subsequent mediation was unsuccessful, but a first offer of just over €13million was made last week, and yesterday, on the day the case was due to go to trial, an offer to settle the case of €15million was put forward. An apology was offered from Dr Sharon Sheehan, Master of the Coombe, last Friday.
She wrote to Eoin’s parents: ‘The Coombe Women and Infants Hospital wishes to apologise sincerely and unreservedly to you and your son Eoin, for the catastrophic injuries suffered by him at his birth, and for the devastating consequences for you all.’
Judge Kelly said: ‘The apology came late in the day but it came nonetheless and I am sure it has provided some level of comfort to Mr and Mrs McCallig.’ Mr McCallig told the court: ‘I can forgive mistakes, catastrophic as they are. Frontline staff are under enormous pressure.
‘But what I can’t forgive is how they deal with families. They fight them through court, to the steps of the court, usually without any admission of liability.’
He said early intervention for children like Eoin was crucial.
But instead, hundreds of millions of euro were spent by the health service on legal fees.
‘The culture needs to change. They need to make things right, there and then. We were basically told that nothing could be done, just get on with it and don’t pursue us.’ Judge Kelly approved the settlement offer.
‘Culture needs to change’