A landmark legal action for damages has been brought against the State and the Health Service Executive by the family of the late Pat Joe Walsh, who bled to death in Monaghan general hospital after staff failed to transfer him to three other hospitals for emergency surgery.
Because of "serious systems failures", Mr Walsh (75) was "exposed to a system and standard of healthcare which endangered his life and exposed him to a serious, foreseeable and avoidable risk to his life", it is claimed.
The case, believed to be the first of its kind to be brought here under the European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003, alleges a series of breaches of the Monaghan pensioner's rights under that Act. The claim is also brought under the Civil Liability Act.
The action is being taken by Mr Walsh's son Patrick, Drumconrath Road, Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan; his three sisters, Phyllis Hughes (72), Long Island, New York, Anne Murray (80), Navan Road, Dublin, and Mary Callan (74), Carrickmacross; and his brother, Edward Walsh, Castlebellingham, Co Louth.
The defendants are the HSE, the Minister for Health and Children, Ireland and the Attorney General.
Mr Walsh's family alleges there was a failure to take appropriate steps to safeguard his life, to ensure he did not suffer inhuman and degrading treatment while in the care of the State authorities and to ensure his personal dignity and bodily integrity.
Those failures breached various provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights, it is alleged.
Mr Walsh was in need of a critical intensive care unit (ICU) bed which were available in nearby hospitals. The failure to get one breached his convention rights, it is alleged.
Patrick Walsh claims that, as a result of observing his father immediately before and at the time of death and because of the circumstances surrounding his death, he had suffered a foreseeable shock, abnormal grieving process and psychiatric and/or psychological injury.
The action, served in recent days on the State, arises after Mr Walsh, Aghafad, Carrickmacross, died of a bleeding ulcer at Monaghan hospital on October 14th, 2005, after staff in the hospital failed to have him transferred to three other hospitals - Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, Cavan General Hospital and Beaumont Hospital in Dublin - for emergency surgery.
Monaghan hospital had sought the transfer because it was not permitted to carry out such surgery. The report of an independent inquiry into Mr Walsh's death, published by the HSE last month, found that while his death may have been inevitable, it was "avoidable in the circumstances in which it occurred".
The report also found that one intensive care bed was available in Drogheda and two were available in Cavan, to which Mr Walsh could have been transferred.
The report criticised a number of doctors involved in Mr Walsh's care and also criticised the management of health services in the northeast.
It referred to a "sustained failure" of management to resolve issues such as interpersonal difficulties between consultants in the region and said events occurred "not primarily as a result of individual clinician failures but as a consequence of dysfunctional processes, relationships and management structures".
