Clare Daly appeal for compulsory inquests into maternal deaths

An emotional appeal was made in the Dáil for the Government to enact legislation to ensure inquests are automatically held into the deaths of women who die in pregnancy or up to six weeks after childbirth.

Independent TD Clare Daly said it was an “urgent matter that we enact this into law in the lifetime of this Government”. A 2007 Bill to reform the coroners’ court legislation has not yet been introduced.

Ms Daly became upset during her speech as she introduced her private member’s Coroners Bill. She said much was said about Ireland “being one of the safest countries in the world in which to give birth but in the absence of accurate statistics, it is a groundless assertion”.

In 2007 two obstetric consultants had highlighted that “maternity mortality statistics were under-reported, suffered from poor validation methods and were not reliable”.

Members and supporters of the families of women who died during childbirth and had to campaign for inquests into their deaths, some unsuccessfully, were in the public gallery for the debate.

She said the Bill “is simply about triggering an automatic inquest into a maternal death, which is a death during or following pregnancy up to six weeks post partum for any hospital or maternal care unit or other location where women are under the care of an obstetrician or midwife”.

Ms Daly became visibly emotional as she read from a letter written to Minister for Health Leo Varadkar, by the children of Sally Rowlette, whose family had to campaign for an inquest.

“We miss our mum so much every day. Can you please make sure this will never happen to any other mum again and make our hospitals safe?”

She listed the names of eight women who died in childbirth where public inquests “eventually ruled that medical misadventure was the cause of death for healthy, pregnant young women”.

Ms Daly said: “We know from inquests into the deaths of these eight women that vital information was withheld and they were often not privy to the internal investigations and reports until the HSE was ordered to produce them by coroners in public hearings.”

She said the Irish Maternal Death Enquiry team this week revealed that between 2011 and 2013 a total of 27 maternal deaths occurred. “Of those deaths, seven were classified from direct causes and of those, only three had inquests.”

The only way “to get transparency is through accountability with public inquests so that families get answers, but also to enforce genuine accountability on behalf of the HSE”, she said.

Minister of State Simon Harris said the Government would not oppose the Bill as Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald “very much appreciates the intention” behind the Bill.

The Government would make substantial amendments and there were two key points, an ongoing review into the Coroners Service “to make sure we can modernise it and get it right”; and on the issue of mandatory inquests, “not every maternal death raises issues requiring further investigation, and in those cases the bereaved families might be exposed to additional grief and distress if an inquest were held”.

Government backbencher Sean Kyne (FG) said it was regrettable that a simple change to the existing Coroners Act is being delayed because of the necessity of completing the overhaul the entire coroner system.