‘Until these reports are acted upon, we can’t rest’
ONE couple who lost two babies at Portiuncula Hospital have spoken of the distress the revelations have caused.
Lorraine and Warren Reilly from Loughrea told RTÉ’s Six One News yesterday that their daughters, Asha and Amber died in the Galway Hospital in 2008 and 2012, and both of their cases were included in yesterday’s report.
Amber was six days old when she passed away, while Asha was stillborn.
‘She was a big girl and she survived for nearly eight hours after life support was taken away,’ her mother said of Amber.
‘That was so precious to us, to be able to have that time with her on her own.
‘Asha, unfortunately, we didn’t get that chance to see her alive.’
Lorraine added that it had been very difficult to go through the details of her daughters’ deaths in the report.
A review into Baby Amber’s death took place in 2011, but her parents only heard of the review following media reports of an investigation in 2015 into serious deficiencies in maternity services at the hospital.
‘The key thing for us is if you had a baby during that time period in Portiuncula and everything went as normal, as planned, they would be fine. But if there was something that was a high-risk factor or a difficult pregnancy, the staff and the hospital just wasn’t equipped to deal with those scenarios,’ said Warren.
‘We’d just like to reiterate the point that there has been multiple reports in the past of the maternity services in Ireland – it’s not just Portiuncula.
‘Until reports like this are actually taken seriously both at government level and by the HSE ... and the findings actually implemented, then we can’t rest happy as a family.’