Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. My colleagues have outlined some of the concerns raised by the Coroners Society of Ireland, but I want to get some insight from the Minister of State on the timeline for the reforms over the next year, the current position on the consultation and when we expect to see proposals from that consultation. I thank the officials in the Department, who have been very accommodating regarding some of my suggestions on who to engage with in the consultation.Last week, we had a really productive meeting with a number of different families from communities that are often more likely end up in a situation where they have to engage with the coroner's court by means of an inquest because of the type of death involved. We engaged with a number of families who have lost people through acts of violence, suicide and overdose. They were all very generous in sharing their experience of the system to date. Some great suggestions came from that group. It is important to put a number of them on the record as we think about the reforms.

Some of the suggestions related to what we believe trauma informed means. Most of the families felt that people they engaged with throughout the process were kind and nice, but that is not actually what a trauma-informed approach involves. You can have good people, but it is about actually understanding what the term "trauma informed" means. One mother spoke about having to identify her child. She spoke of not even being given a glass of water, and being in a sterile room with no soft furnishings or information about what was going to happen. Some families spoke about the incredibly long wait that they had in relation to their child - one son in particular - coming home, and the impact that has on the way Irish people hold funerals. They want to have a wake in the house and have the coffin open. That gets harder for people the longer the delay with the release of the body.

Some of the suggestions from the groups are really helpful in understanding how families really are at a loss in terms of understanding what way the system works. Obviously, there are all the other professions, but the families said they felt that there is no joined-up Coroner Service as a whole. There are lots of different sectors working on different things, whether that is pathology or something else. We should consider the introduction of a centralised system with a chief coroner who could introduce guidelines in terms of how people should work and who could look at a preventative model as well. The families came up with good suggestions, including that the chief coroner should have a role in terms of research. The officials outlined that there is a preventative role within the Coroner Service and that this requires research. We should look at that. The correlation between class and death is actually something that we have not captured in Ireland in terms of the cases that end up in the coroners system. When people die in prison, by suicide, overdose or violent deaths, we find that many of them - obviously not all of them - come from communities that are concentrated in particular spaces. There are a lot of vulnerable families who do not often know what questions to ask. Perhaps they have never been that situation before.

On the language that is used, the families spoke about how the information needs to be accessible and understandable in terms of engaging and of the detail involved.

In the context of the reforms, if we do look at there being guidelines, we should consider the role of media in reporting on violent deaths. When a suicide is reported from court, for example, there are certain ethics that have to be adhered to in order that other people's suicide ideation is not increased or compounded. We refrain from talking about how somebody may have taken their own life, but there are, perhaps, less ethics involved when reporting on violent death. Often, reporters will have free rein to report on the details revealed in a coroner's court regarding the violence involved in a person's death. This kind of forces families into a process that they may not be ready for. Being able to say that their son or daughter has been murdered is one thing, but sometimes families are not ready to understand fully the injuries that were endured or hear some of the more gory details. There is a place for coroners to set a standard here. Currently, when a person dies, we say that they have no rights anymore because they are dead. Thereafter, the person's mother, father or family members are framed as victims of homicide if the case relates to a homicide. We must ask what rights transfer to these people who have been newly labelled as victims of homicide. One of the mothers in the group spoke really eloquently about having younger children and about having to go through the process of allowing them to know certain types of information at certain times in terms of their grieving process. She spoke of their fears of attending a coroner's court and people not being mindful of language. Obviously, certain language will have to be used, whether it is medical or scientific, but often things are said within a court that probably do not need to be said about particular types of injuries and so on.

One mother went to the court and asked, when she opened the inquest, if she would hear any information that she was not ready to hear yet. She was told she would not. She did not know she would have to be one to open the inquest. When she went to identify her son, she was not given any information about what would be required of her once she had identified him. She did not know there would be a requirement for her to open the inquest. That is a piece of information that does not help somebody process trauma and plan what is going to be required of them in this process. Within a few days, she opened the inquest, asked if there was going to be information shared that she did not want to hear in terms of the type of injuries suffered, and she was told there was not. Straight away, the judge said the exact thing that she had just been told she would not hear. It is about having an understanding of the effect that language can sometime have when you are raw and wide open like that and something terrible has happened in your family. What we might think is respectful language because it is a language we are used to using within a court of law or whatever is not for families. If we are going to fully respect families engaging with the system, we have to fully understand what their experiences are when they engage.

I hope that beyond this being legislation that will address an issue that is arising now, we need to be very clear about when reforms will actually happen and when further legislation will be forthcoming. We need to take into account the experiences of the families that we have been meeting when it comes to accessible information. We must ensure that they have all the information they need, access to a real service that is trauma informed and that there are preventative measures in place. We need to consider how we can look at the patterns of death in Ireland and how the Coroner Service can lead research in understanding measures we can take at a wider policy level to prevent many untimely deaths and many of the cases that, unfortunately, come before coroners.

There is also the question of prisons. I have spoken to some men in prison about their experiences when somebody dies on their landing and perhaps they have found the body. There is almost an extra layer of stuff that happens there, which means that the prison carries out its own investigation then the coroner does as well. There are two entities doing the same thing, but no real supports are put in place for men in prison who have become witnesses in a coroner's inquest. We need to think of them as a cohort of people when we introduce reforms. They are people that will need support, but they are not as accessible as other families and witnesses in society.

Looking at the supports provided in the reforms, beyond bereavement support, there needs to be some sort of advocacy or family liaison person who works at a community level. If there is a new coroner system, whether that is centralised or national in nature instead of being broken up across different counties and regions, it should work with local communities. It is local community workers involved in addiction counselling and all of those things who end up supporting people. Even those groups, whether they are family resource centres or whatever, do not understand how the system works. Because of the nature of how many of these - often very young - people have died, I think we should really put the coroner reforms on the radar. People will think they do not mean anything to them or that they have got no place within them, but I think we should be educating the wider community at large around the role that the coroners system can play in supporting families and communities who are bereaved in what are often awful circumstances.