{"id":149842,"date":"2025-11-20T08:59:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T08:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/149842\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T08:59:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T08:59:07","slug":"health-minister-shares-sons-neonatal-brain-injury-as-medical-negligence-overhaul-questioned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/149842\/","title":{"rendered":"Health minister shares son\u2019s neonatal brain injury as medical negligence overhaul questioned"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Health minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has spoken in personal terms about her child who suffered a neonatal injury during a discussion on compensation payouts by the State.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is important that I declare an interest in this to the chair,&#8221; she said at the health committee.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">&#8220;I have a child who had a neonatal brain injury and who goes through the State Claims process. So I am not just a minister for health but a parent in precisely that situation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">&#8220;It is very important I disclose that although it is quite private. So I do have personal understanding of this particular process and the interim steps and the way it is managed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">She was answering questions from Fianna F\u00e1il TD Martin Daly who is also a GP.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Dr Daly queried when reforms advised by a working group led by Professor Rhona Mahony will be implemented.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">These include pre-action protocols and a special court to hear  <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishexaminer.com\/news\/arid-41631805.html\">medical negligence cases.<\/a>\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The minister said she met women who took part in research for that report by University College Cork and none had wanted to go down the legal route.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cI recognise that report but I also recognise it was chaired by somebody who was a master of a maternity hospital where I repeatedly see events being presented in the courts, including my own event presented in the court,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cI have questions and I had questions at the time. I don\u2019t believe it is a panacea necessarily.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The minister questioned accountability in hospitals run by a board, saying \u201creal accountability is considered in a different way\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">There are dedicated medical negligence lists in courts already, she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Ms Carroll MacNeill acknowledged mediation is in place but described it as \u201clitigation by a different name&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">&#8220;We don\u2019t have a culture yet of real acknowledgement of wrongdoing, of anticipating mental health implications of that,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cWhat I really want to see from maternity hospitals as leaders in this field is a very different attitude to openness, accountability, investigation and responsiveness and proactivity in wrapping arms around women and babies who had had very bad outcomes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">She said she has tried to begin work on this issue but indicated her workload contains many urgent items.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Last month, an Irish Hospital Consultants\u2019 Association conference heard changes to how compensation in medical-negligence cases is paid will be implemented \u201cwithin weeks\u201d as long-awaited reform takes effect.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">It also heard next year could also see the long-delayed introduction of better information sharing and mediation between the legal teams of patients and hospitals \u2014 to reduce the need for court proceedings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Health minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has spoken in personal terms about her child who suffered a neonatal injury&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11246,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-149842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-childrens-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}