We’d give everything to see her walk and talk

The heartbroken parents of a seven year old Galway girl with Cerebral Palsy – this week awarded a €2.5 million interim payment from the HSE – said that they would give every penny back if only their daughter could walk and talk.

Roise Lavery suffers from epilepsy and cerebral palsy; she is unable to speak and is confined to a wheelchair as a result of a drug given to her mum Melissa during childbirth.

And while this week’s interim settlement will secure Roise’s future, her parents say they’d give it all back in an instant if only their daughter could be well.

“It is terrible to think that Roise will never say ‘mommy, I love you’,” said her mother Melissa Lavery, after the family secured the payment in the High Court this week.

The Laverys, from Claregalway, had issued High Court proceedings before the Health Service Executive eventually admitted liability earlier this week.

Melissa Lavery had an uneventful pregnancy with Roise, their first child, and has since had two other healthy children without any complication.

It was alleged that University Hospital Galway failed to monitor and supervise sufficiently and to evaluate the administration of oxytocin, a common drug given during pregnancy to induce labour and to strengthen contractions during childbirth.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.