Neary victims excluded from redress will be compensated, say parties

VICTIMS OF obstetrician Michael Neary who were excluded from a redress scheme will be compensated within a year if Fine Gael and Labour are elected to form a government, the two parties said yesterday.

Dr Neary was struck off the medical register in 2003 for carrying out an excessive number of hysterectomies at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda.

He was found to have unnecessarily removed patients’ wombs and it emerged later that he had also removed women’s ovaries unnecessarily.

However, 35 women damaged by the obstetrician were excluded from a 2007 redress scheme for reasons including, in some cases, their age when the operations were performed.

Fine Gael spokesman on health Dr James Reilly said yesterday that if in government he would seek to address the issue either through the application of existing redress or through the State Claims Agency. Some mechanism was required “to acknowledge the hurt and harm done” and give rise to compensation, he said.

Labour spokeswoman on health Jan O’Sullivan said her party would address the issue “at the early stages of government”. There was “not a great flood” but a limited number of women who were “entitled to an apology and recompense”, she said. The issue was cross-party and “not a political football”. Both Dr Reilly and Ms O’Sullivan said they would deal with the matter within a year.

They were speaking at a press conference organised by Patient Focus and attended by members of the all-party Oireachtas patient focus support group made up of politicians from the northeast.

Former minister for health Mary Harney said in 2008 she would not extend the scheme on the advice of the author of the Lourdes Hospital Inquiry report, Ms Justice Maureen Harding Clark.

Sinn Féin spokesman on health Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin also committed to providing compensation within a year. The extension of the scheme could cost about €3 million, he said.

Cathriona Molloy of Patient Focus welcomed the cross-party support. One of the victims, Marie Raeburn (59), said compensation would mean “that he was wrong and that justice will be done. It’s not going to change what happened to me because all of us were profoundly damaged by this man.”

The mother-of-two from Ardee, Co Louth, was operated on by Mr Neary 19 years ago, three days after her 40th birthday.

She agreed to have her womb removed because of a fibroid caused by endometriosis but had asked him not to remove her ovaries. “Needless to say he did” and she was “plunged into menopause”, she said. When her files were examined by an obstetrician four years ago she realised the operation had not been necessary.

The 35 women in the group include those who were aged over 40 but had both ovaries removed unnecessarily and two families where the woman died in recent years and could not avail of the original scheme. When the Neary redress scheme was announced in April 2007 it was estimated the € 45 million compensation fund would benefit about 172 women.