Ireland 'fascinated with death'

Irish people are "fascinated with death", the State Pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy remarked yesterday.

Addressing students in Dublin City University Prof Cassidy, who is from Scotland, said: "In Ireland in particular you are fascinated with death. It's not a good week if you haven't been to a removal," she added jokingly.

She made her remarks in a question and answer session at the end of an address she had been invited to give to celebrate 25 years of DCU's science faculty.

While Prof Cassidy refused to comment on specific cases, she said in general remarks that she believed all evidence from forensic pathologists should be put before a jury for consideration.

However, she said that while the cause of death could always be established by a forensic pathologist, other factors surrounding any death were only ever a matter of medical opinion.

She told the gathering of about 250 that most medical practitioners were reluctant to pursue a career in pathology because their findings were constantly questioned.

"That's especially so in a court of law and rightly so. We have to accept being questioned." The evidence of a pathologist should always be "robust", "unbiased" and must "stand the test of time". However, only in a "shaky case" would a pathologist's findings be too heavily relied upon.

While she believed she coped well with the emotions that went with dealing with often tragic deaths, cases involving serious injury to children were often "horrendous".

One case she found difficult involved the murder of a young girl whose mother was known to her when she lived and worked in Scotland.

Prof Cassidy said the young victim was so badly injured she did not recognise her. She only realised she knew the victim and her family when the girl's mother came to identify the body a number of days after the post-mortem.