Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On my behalf and on behalf of Fianna Fáil, I support Deputy Clare Daly on bringing forward this legislation, the Coroners Bill 2015. Essentially, the Bill focuses on one issue, the need for an automatic inquest into all maternal deaths. We should all be ashamed that the Coroners Bill 2007 has been sitting on the shelf for so many years without having been completed. It is urgent that it is completed, although it probably also needs to be updated and modified.

Many people listening to this debate might wonder what we are talking about. When we talk about maternal death, we are talking about the death of a mother during pregnancy or within six weeks of giving birth. This has been spelled out, but not everybody knows what we mean by maternal death. I thank Deputy Daly for bringing forward this legislation, and I hope it gets to Committee State as soon as possible with a view to enactment in legislation as quickly as possible. Fianna Fáil will support that.

We all have personal experience of the issues we discuss and that is often what makes us good legislators. We are not normally here on a Friday afternoon and are usually out in our constituencies meeting people and dealing with their personal experiences. Much of what we say here is based on the views of the people we meet, which we must reflect. I am not aware of many maternal deaths in my immediate area, but I have some experiences of relevant issues. One case I am familiar with concerns a similar issue, the death of baby Mark Molloy in the maternity unit of Portlaoise hospital. In that case, the parents were lied to by the HSE and they had to fight hard for an inquest. Eventually, they got an inquest, but had to fight on again and again because the system here is geared to protect those in the system. It is not geared to protect the citizen.

Baby Mark's parents were not told the truth and senior HSE management covered up his death. I have often wondered whether it is a criminal offence to cover up a death. I do not know, but I have asked the question several times and have said the issue should be examined. I believe those in the HSE who covered up deaths in situations such as this are not fit for office. Their actions should be examined. It is not right that people can cover up and deny responsibility for a death and pretend it did not happen. They try to explain it away and hope the people asking questions will go away. Thank God that many parents fight for the truth in these situations.

I also know of a mother who was giving birth in Portlaoise hospital but who had to be transferred urgently by ambulance to the Coombe hospital in Dublin. Halfway there, she deteriorated and had to be taken to Naas hospital. Thankfully, she survived. The reason she was brought to Naas was to save her life. There was no maternity unit in Naas hospital so it was not to save the life of the child. She spoke to me subsequently about her experience saying that she could not get information on what had happened. This is the nub of what is wrong. People know mistakes have been made but refuse to admit the truth and try to cover it up.

Perhaps they feel they will be embarrassed if the truth comes out and that they will not look good, so they want to protect themselves and protect the organisation and hope things will go away. Telling the truth would solve the anguish of many parents in those situations. It does not correct what went wrong but it is important to get to the truth. The withholding of the truth is a double injustice for many of the families concerned.

An additional flaw in the way the situation is structured within the HSE in recent times is that the State Claims Agency manages all the legal defence cases on behalf of the State. There is now an absolute separation of the settlement of a case by the State Claims Agency from the people who were involved when the incident occurred. Nobody in the HSE cares because once cases go to the State Claims Agency it is off the books of the HSE and it has nothing to do with it anymore. In some cases of children who have suffered catastrophic injuries at birth, the case is settled in two years or it could even be seven years. That time lapse is causing further problems because lessons are not being learnt. Too many internal private reports within the HSE are not being shared. People are embarrassed and they might try to do something in one hospital but the information is not being shared. That is a complete breach of governance.

As has been said about other organisations, it is the first function of the HSE to protect the HSE. Anyone who runs into difficulty with any section of the HSE will find that once senior management gets involved there will be a clampdown on information and the first instinct is to protect the HSE. That has happened in several organisations. It happens in local authorities, education and training boards and right across the State. It is probably human nature that people react to protect themselves from an allegation or accusation but that should not be the case. People want the truth more than anything else. That is the reason we must take this matter out of the hands of those who currently deal with it to ensure there is an automatic inquest in all those situations carried out by somebody utterly independent of the organisation where the incident occurred. When one has a complaint one is always told that one is an isolated case and that it is the first time it ever happened. Everybody can empathise with that nonsense and that standard line from many organisations.

A confidential maternity death inquiry based in UCC was carried out which showed an increase in the number of maternal deaths in the 2010 to 2012 period. The report showed also that the number of maternal deaths in this country has risen sharply and the pregnancy-related death rate is now higher here than in the United Kingdom. The rate of maternal death based on hospital reports and other sources is four times higher than the official figures gathered by the Central Statistics Office from death certificates. That says it all. Official Ireland records deaths in a certain way but when one digs deeper one will find that the truth is different. I am being hard on many public organisations but, unfortunately, the evidence of that single statement proves that what official Ireland records is not the truth or the full story and it is part of a cover up. People must accept that.

There were 38 recorded maternal deaths between 2009 and 2012. Some of them may have been directly due to obstetric causes while others were caused due to pre-existing conditions and other such issues. The number is very high. We owe it to Tania McCabe, Evelyn Flanagan, Jennifer Crean, Bimbo Onanuga, Dhara Kivlehan, Nora Hyland, Savita Halappanavar and Sally Rowlette who all died of medical misadventure, as determined by inquest. In those situations 14 children lost their mother and the families had to fight to get to the truth. People should not have to fight to get to the truth. That should be basic and endemic to every organisation. That is the reason the legislation is required, if for no other reason.

I support the passage of Deputy Clare Daly’s legislation. We should have dealt with the Coroners Bill 2007 long before now. I hope there is time to deal with it. The Minister of State, Deputy Simon Harris, has seen how quickly we can deal with legislation. This is the sixth separate item of legislation I have dealt with in the House today. Four of them were completed in two hours and a number of items were guillotined. Deputies were able to come to the House and in a guillotined debate lasting less than two hours approve a budget of €369 million for the next three years to run the Oireachtas. That was no problem. The House can dispose of legislation within hours if it chooses to do so. We have had four examples of the Government guillotining legislation. It is possible if we want to get something done. Christmas is coming. We are near the end of our term. We can deal with legislation and dispose of it following two hours of debate. This is the sixth item of legislation I am dealing with today but, unfortunately, this Bill is not being completed today: unlike the first four, it is being shoved off to a committee. I ask the Government to show the same sense of urgency in getting the Bill through Committee, Report and Final Stages in the next week as it has shown in the first four legislative items that were guillotined through the House today.

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