INQUESTS INTO the deaths of the Dunne family of Monageer will take place next week, the office of the coroner for north Co Wexford has confirmed.
Acting coroner Dr Sean Nixon will hold the inquests before a jury in Enniscorthy next Thursday morning. A number of witnesses are expected to be called to give evidence.
The purpose of the inquests is to officially establish the identities of the deceased and where and how they died. The bodies of Adrian Dunne (29), Ciara Dunne (24) and their children, Leanne (5) and Shania (3), were discovered by gardaí at their home on the Moin Rua estate in the village of Monageer, six miles outside Enniscorthy on the afternoon of Monday, April 23rd, 2007. Postmortems were carried out at Wexford General Hospital.
Mr Dunne’s mother and siblings, who live in Clonroche, Co Wexford, will be represented at the inquests by the Enniscorthy law firm John A. Sinnott. Solicitors John Murphy and Jason Dunne have expressed concern and disappointment that details of the postmortem results were included in the Monageer report published by Minister of State for Children Barry Andrews on Tuesday. They said publishing the information in this manner was “most unusual” and was normally a matter for the inquests.
The legislation covering inquests requires that a verdict be returned in relation to the identity of the deceased, and how, when and where the death occurred. The range of verdicts open to the jury includes accidental death; death by misadventure, suicide or natural causes; unlawful killing; or, an “open” verdict. Nobody is found guilty or innocent at an inquest and no criminal or civil liability is determined.
Meanwhile, Minister for Health Mary Harney said yesterday the report into the Dunne family tragedy had not been censored. She said the Government would have preferred to publish the report in full.
“I can assure you there’s no question of censorship here. What we’ve tried to do here is to be sensitive to both families in this situation, to all the healthcare professionals that are involved, but above all else we’ve got to obey the law,” she said.
“Unfortunately we weren’t able to publish the full report because of the advice of the Attorney General and outside senior counsel advice was sought in relation to that matter but we would love to be able to publish that report quite honestly.”
Ms Harney said she had read the full report and found it “very harrowing”. The report made clear that “nothing could have saved this family, unfortunately”.
Ms Harney stressed that the tragedy had taken place during the daytime.
“I want to make that clear because much of the comment subsequent to the publication of the report, there’s an assumption that because we didn’t have out-of-hours services, but this tragedy took place during daytime so I’d like to make that clear.”
Ms Harney was speaking at the seventh international cancer conference at St James’s Hospital in Dublin.