Archive News
Savita inquiry deadlocked despite Taoiseach’s plea
Date Published: 21-Nov-2012
A standoff between the widower of Savita Halappanavar and the Health Service Executive over an investigation into her death following a miscarriage emerged this week with the Taoiseach Enda Kenny intervening to issue a personal appeal for his cooperation.
The tragedy continued to dominate national and international news coverage for a second week with a rift between the Coalition partners in Government over the issue somewhat healed when Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore appeared to back down on an earlier insistence that legislation would be brought forward immediately to legislate for abortion.
The case has led to a furore over the State’s failure to introduce certainty for doctors when it comes to performing terminations, which were deemed lawful if they were necessary to save the life of the mother under a Supreme Court ruling in 1992.
Savita, a 31-year-old dentist, died from blood poisoning after a miscarriage when she was 17 weeks pregnant. Her husband, Praveen, 34, an engineer with Boston Scientific, said she was repeatedly refused a termination and left to suffer in agony for three days until the foetal heart beat had stopped.
At the time of going to press, Praveen was standing by his insistence that he would only take part in a sworn public inquiry that was completely independent of the HSE as he had no confidence in the organisation investigating itself and its staff.
He told Miriam O’Callaghan on a special Prime Time programme that he would not meet the head of the enquiry.
He spent eight hours giving a statement to the gardaí in Oranmore on the circumstances of his wife’s death.
There was widespread condemnation of the decision by the HSE to appoint three consultants from University Hospital Galway to the inquiry team. There was also criticism by the anti-abortion lobby group about the suitability of the inquiry chairman, Professor Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, head of obstetrics and gynaecology at St George’s, University of London.
The HSE relented and withdrew the three Galway consultants from the panel but stood by the appointment of Prof Arulkumaran despite the revelation that he had co-authored a report which called on countries with restrictive abortion laws to adopt more liberal regimes to reduce maternal illness and death.
Prof Arulkumaran said he hoped to have a meeting with Mr Halappanavar to persuade him to change his mind about talking to investigators.
Praveen’s solicitor Gerard O’Donnell threatened not to allow access to Savita’s medical files which would render any investigation into her death all but impossible.
Dr Reilly said a public inquiry would take longer to carry out than the private inquiry currently proposed and the answers to what happened would be “an awful lot” slower to come out. He had a duty of care to women to ensure there were not any unsafe practices in Galway University Hospital.
Yesterday, the Taoiseach urged the grieving widower to accept a request for no-prejudice discussions in order to progress the investigation.
See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
images/files/images/x3_Courthouse.jpg
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
