Report on Ms Y case to include journey to Liverpool to seek abortion

The scope of the HSE report on the case of Ms Y has been expanded to include the circumstances of a journey to Liverpool she made five weeks before her baby was delivered by Caesarean section. Ms Y was the young asylum seeker who unsuccessfully sought an abortion after arriving in Ireland pregnant as a result of alleged rape.

The report team has been liaising with the Garda National Immigration Bureau about Ms Y's arrest in the English city on July 1st and her subsequent return to Ireland. In addition, the bureau has provided the team with contact details for relevant immigration officials in Liverpool.

As reported last month, Ms Y was arrested in the English city on July 1st having arrived, it is believed, by ferry.

She was arrested at Birkenhead ferry port at 8.35am for illegally entering the UK from Ireland and held by Merseyside police for more than 11 hours.

Her custody summary indicates Ms Y told immigration services she was pregnant and wanted to harm herself. She had in her possession €28 and £1 in cash, as well as toiletries and rosary beads.

A note timed at 3.49pm in the summary stated social services had been contacted. The writer records: “Basically I am querying what options if any there are in regards to [Ms Y] and solicitors’ representation that police, immigration and social services have a duty of care to [Ms Y] and this may well involve assisting her in obtaining a termination given the alleged circumstances of her pregnancy.”

Pregnant

Ms Y had found out she was pregnant on April 4th this year, shortly after arriving in Ireland on March 28th. She told a number of agencies she would “rather die” than proceed with the pregnancy because it resulted from rape in her own country and she expressed a wish to have an abortion. Her baby boy was delivered on August 6th, at about 26 weeks’ gestation.

The Liverpool incident is recorded in neither the draft HSE report nor the Department of Justice’s records on the case.

However, it has now emerged that the Garda bureau last month provided the HSE report team with contact details for the “appropriate point of contact” within the United Kingdom’s Immigration Compliance and Enforcement Office, following a request from the HSE team.

Report’s scope

This request from the HSE followed inquiries to it by Ms Y’s solicitor,

Caoimhe Haughey

, as to why this incident was not included in the report’s scope.

The HSE’s quality and patient safety division, in a letter to Ms Haughey on behalf of the report team dated October 10th, tells her correspondence from the Garda bureau is being “followed up” and that the team will include this “as it relates to the terms of reference of the report”.

According to the terms of reference, the report is to “establish all of the factual circumstances and the sequence of events as they relate to the care provided to Ms Y in relation to her pregnancy”and to “examine and document the chain of communication between different service providers...and the flow of information related to Ms Y both internally in the HSE and externally”.

A HSE spokeswoman last night said: “We’re not in a position to discuss the work of the review team while the review is ongoing. All relevant matters will be considered by the team and we hope to publish the review in due course.”