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YESTERDAY, A REPORT confirmed the HSE had compensation to 399 victims of symphysiotomy – paying out a total of €34 million.
Payments of either €50,000, €100,000 or €150,000 were given to 399 women who applied to a grant payment scheme looking to compensate women for the injuries they sustained as a result of the childbirth procedure.
But of the women who were eligible for the payment, five had died before they could accept an offer. According to the HSE’s statement:
Four applicants died before any offer was made. One applicant died before the offer that was notified to her could be accepted.
Marie O’Connor, a spokesperson for the Survivors of Symphysiotomy said:
“The sons and daughters of these women who have died feel left out and not taken into account. They feel that their mothers’ suffering never received any acknowledgment or recognition.”
O’Connor rejects the recent Clarke report and redress scheme as a ‘whitewash’ that sidesteps responsibility, saying a lot of women feel the same.
“These women wanted the truth on a clandestine operation. We’d certainly see the latest grant scheme as a part of that, as it doesn’t admit responsibility or apologise – it wishes to mitigate the harm and injury caused and obscure the truth.
I know one woman who received one of the top payments of this scheme (€150,000) and she said she was extremely disappointed that there was no mechanism for her to say what she wanted to say.
O’Connor also emphasised the point that there were women who died before the scandal was ever uncovered – and probably more women who received the operation but still to this day don’t know.
She’s calling for an independent inquiry into the clinical circumstances around symphysiotomy – to prove that they were planned procedures and not done in emergency situations.
“There was an inquiry 12 years ago and it went nowhere.”
The Harding Clarke Report on the payment scheme noted that nearly 185 applications were rejected as the women “were unable to establish their claim”.
Background
Symphysiotomy was carried out on an estimated 1,500 women in Ireland up to the 1980s, long after it was discontinued in other jurisdictions.
The controversial operation involved cutting the cartilage of a pregnant women’s pelvic bone – or breaking the bone itself in some extreme cases – to widen the birth canal.
It was used as a preferred state procedure when most other countries had adopted the Caesarean section.
Many women subjected to the procedure were left with long-term medical difficulties, including incontinence and chronic pain.
The ‘Surgical Symphysiotomy Ex-gratia Payment Scheme’ was approved by government in November 2014.
It has handed out payments totalling €34 million to victims of symphysiotomy on the condition that they drop any legal proceedings against the state.
Judge Maureen Harding Clark was appointed independent assessor to the scheme which was aimed at women who underwent a surgical symphysiotomy or pubiotomy in the State between 1940 and 1990.
‘I thought I had paralysis’
In November 2014 the Survivors of Symphysiotomy’s submission to the United Nations Committee Against Torture gave the accounts of women who underwent the “barbaric and cruel” childbirth operation.
Here is the account of one woman of what she felt after the procedure:
“The next day [the doctors] heard the roaring and screaming. They didn’t tell me what they were doing, I thought I had paralysis, I couldn’t move my legs up or down, I was so sore I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t hold him [the child]: they kept him in [hospital] three months. I was in six weeks, my legs were as dead as dead could be. I asked what was wrong, nobody told me.
“It was a case of shut up – you felt you were up against a brick wall. He [doctor] didn’t come to my bedside. I was too paralysed to walk.”
Only because he knows nobody will tolerate the reimposition of restrictions
@Maria Hickey-Fagan: yYou’re dead right, look at the fallout lockdowns are having on inflation which is a long way from finished yet. Lockdowns affecting and will affect more than covid ever did…
@Declan Doyle: really? A certain war currently ongoing has nothing to do with it? You know, the one driving up the prices of electricity and causing an energy crisis…….something that to my knowledge the lockdowns never did.
Good idea to get going on a winter strategy…almost midway through October. Donnelly on the ball.
@alan: Eh, they’ve published the plan? That’s well beyond strategy
@alan: C’mon, what evidence of proactivity have we seen from this gov’t, they spend all their time chasing their tails. There are certain areas where we should err on the side of caution yet when it comes to Covid.
His plan to treat Long-COVID is to ignore it and hope it goes away by itself.
Imagine getting away with that in any other profession.
@Crow: imagine still going on about long covid
@Conor King: you would be ‘still going on about it’ if you were totally debilitated by it.
Imagine belittling sick people because you want to deny reality. Back to you QAnon mates there like a good lad.
@Crow: like they did with covid initially
Journal deletes documentary from the UK, that available on most platforms so the one sided narrative continues. Well done Journal.
@Stephen Grehan: and nobody even got to call you a conspiracy theorist
@Stephen Grehan: thumbs up for trying
@SquintEastwood: Safe and Effective: A Second Opinion
@SquintEastwood: Well done i was afraid to mention it as i suspect that comment would also be deleted. Perhaps the Journalist Tadgh McNally would care to explain why it was deleted when most platforms are showing this now, when up until a few weeks ago would have taken it down.
I’m fully vaxxed, have had it twice and the second time was a whole lot easier.
My father in law has just had it for the third time and had little more than a sore throat.
I’ll get the fku & covid jab and continue on.
We really need to stop going on about it at this point and just get on with life.
@Sequoia: You tell everyone to not talk about it meanwhile you’re talking about it? Thanks for giving us your father in laws life story
@Tom Jacob:
My opinion & thoughts are vitally important round here.
Didn’t you get the memo? I’m kind of a big deal.
Have an awesome day.
@Sequoia: I thought at first you said, “I’m fully waxed….”
Agree with your post, I think the gov’t have exhausted their money orchard.
1 in 40 had the virus last week in Northern Ireland. I’d imagine its similar here.
@Celtic Eagle: exactly, case numbers rising quickly in the UK, but sure let’s not talk about it in Ireland and hope it goes away
@Ian James Burgess: Ya gman because talking about it will make it go away. Does every comment you make about it reduce cases by 1 or what? If you’re so afraid of Covid then stay in your room all day lol
@Celtic Eagle: I dont believe thats true unless you can back that up!……. In the whole of the UK there was 62.4k new cases reported in the week to the 6th of October (From Our World In Data)….. 1 in 40 of population of 1.9 million in the north is around 47.5k people. By what your saying most of the cases in the while of the UK just happen to be in the north……… Then when you say you imagine its the same here that equates to around 125k cases here in a week?!?! Laughable!…… Officially its 2.4k here in the week to 5th of Oct.
Google it, I cant post links.
@Celtic Eagle: I did. In the last 7 days there was 1,819 cases in the north. Far from 1 in 40 in a population of 1.9million or 47.5k!……. Funny how you can make up stuff and not back it up with links but I can post links…… Link to the NI covid dashboard…… Some dose of fake news out of you!
@Celtic Eagle: just over 1 in 1,000 FYI
Hospital numbers here have risen by approx 100 over the last week and the percentage of positive tests by 4%. Thankfully icu numbers haven’t risen. It was 11 last night which is down a couple from this time last month. Vaccines are still important though. The UK are still averaging around 300 covid related deaths per week. Of course they didn’t have the same uptake in vaccines among the older population that we had, especially in ethnic groups. I get my 2nd booster tomorrow and I’m dreading it. Have had reactions to all my shots so far. But needs must.
@Gearóid MacEachaidh: No one cares
@Tom Jacob: well clearly you do
@Gearóid MacEachaidh: he’s a half wit, pay no attention.
Good idea to get going on a winter strategy…almost midway through October. Donnelly on the ball.j
@alan: Shrup
@alan: No one cares about Covid unless your 90 years old and smoked 100 fags a day since you were 5.
Good god, sounds like they will only make masks mandatory in certain situations, if it happens, though I’m not holding my breath. Similar to 2020, how they mandated masks in shops and on public transport before other places like covid can’t spread in other areas outside of shops/public transport/healthcare.
@Lisa O’Connor: no, but they are the places where the public congregate and move around the most (shops) or are packed in the most(public transport)
Well those of us who are willing to be vaxed are better protected and those who don’t want it can take their own chances, as long as when they do catch it, they have the cop on to stay away from others.
BTW, before anyone mentions it, those who contract it and are vaxed, already show that they have that cop on seeing as they got vaxed in the first place!
have your say