Monageer report 'not censored'

Minister for Health Mary Harney says the report into the Dunne family tragedy in Monageer, Co Wexford has not been censored.

The report was published by Minister of State for Children Barry Andrews this week with sections blacked out for legal reasons. Ms Harney said the Government would prefer to publish the report in full.

“I can assure you there’s no question of censorship here. What we’ve tried to do here is to be sensitive to both families in this situation to all the health care professionals that are involved but above all else we’ve got to obey the law,” she said.

“Unfortunately we weren’t able to publish the full report because of the advice of the attorney general and outside senior counsel advice was sought in relation to that matter but we would love to be able to publish that report quite honestly.”

Ms Harney said she had read the full report and found it “very harrowing”.

She said the report made clear that “nothing could have saved this family, unfortunately”.

Ms Harney stressed that the tragedy had taken place during the daytime. “I want to make that clear because much of the comment subsequent to the publication of the report, there’s an assumption that because we didn’t have out-of-hours services, but this tragedy took place during daytime so I’d like to make that clear.”

Ms Harney was speaking at the seventh international cancer conference at St James's Hospital in Dublin.