State paid €840,000 legal costs in negligence case

Public accounts: The State has paid out €840,000 in recent weeks to meet the legal costs of a child born with cerebral palsy who successfully sued for negligence, it has emerged.

The legal costs, paid out earlier this month, related only to those of the plaintiff and did not include the bills of lawyers representing the obstetrician concerned, the hospital or the State.

The figures were set out by the National Treasury Management Agency's (NTMA's) chief executive, Dr Michael Somers, at a meeting of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee.

Dr Somers told the committee that cases where something went wrong in the area of obstetrics could "cost a fortune".

"In a case on which we were signing off yesterday involving a child born with cerebral palsy, the court award was €4.7 million. We just signed off on the legal costs of the plaintiff and these costs alone amounted to €840,000.

"This was a case we inherited and the costs are the costs before those for the counsel of the doctor, hospital and State itself come into play," Mr Somers told the committee.

He said that there were 15-20 of these cases in the system at various stages and that they were the most expensive types of cases that the State had to deal with.

"In other cases, in which one might have suffered from some sort of damage in a hospital, costs might amount to €50,000 or €100,000, but where children are born with brain damage, the costs are unbelievable," he said.

Dr Somers said the NTMA was only starting out in the area of risk management regarding obstetrics and had been seeking to bring in a medical expert to assist it.

"We hired one doctor with some expertise in this area and we hope another will join us soon. I do not know how much we will be able to do - I am a little sceptical.

"These cases are fairly isolated but when they arise, the consequences are catastrophic. They usually concern a child deprived of oxygen at some stage during delivery. One reads the files and asks how it could happen.

"It is sometimes the case that a doctor cannot be found in time or that somebody makes a mistake.

"I am not sure what we will be able to do to guard against such occurrences. We obviously do our best but I suspect we will be small players in this regard," he said.

Adrian Kearns of the State Claims Agency said that one estimate produced by the Department of Health a number of years ago was that the State could face a total liability of up to €400 million in relation to claims in the area of obstetrics. He said that the State Claims Agency had not looked in detail at these assumptions.

"The lack of information from the Medical Defence Union [the UK-based international medical indemnity agency which insured many Irish doctors] in the department might mean that the assumptions will have to be taken with a certain degree of caution," he said.

Mr Kearns said that given that the Medical Defence Union had "left the field", it would fall on State agencies to manage these legal cases.

He said the State was trying to get as much money back from the Medical Defence Union as possible.