A PSYCHIATRIST has told a court he made "a serious error of judgment" in writing to broadcaster Mike Murphy at RTE about a consultation he had with Mr Murphy's former wife during their marriage break up.
Mrs Eileen Murphy is suing consultant psychiatrist Dr Paul E. McQuaid, Morehampton Road, Dublin, for up to £30,000 damages for breach of professional confidentiality.
She told Judge Esmonde Smyth in Dublin Circuit Civil Court yesterday that in early 1995 during her marriage break up she made an appointment with Dr McQuaid.
On the way out she stopped to pay his fee to his secretary but found there was no cheque left in her cheque book.
Mrs Murphy, a receptionist in Blackrock Clinic, told her counsel, Mr Brian O'Moore, she recalled receiving two invoices for Dr McQuaid's leek and, while always intending to pay it, had overlooked it. In May 1995 her former husband had received a copy of the bill addressed "Private and Confidential" to Mr Mike Murphy, RTE.
She said she had not wanted Mr Murphy to know she had visited a psychiatrist and was greatly distressed by what had happened.
Mrs Murphy told Mr Eugene Gleeson, counsel for Dr McQuaid, she had not sought an apology from Dr McQuaid and felt if she had she would have received one. She felt it had not been Dr McQuaid's intention to inflict misery and suffering upon her by sending the bill to Mr Murphy but it had been thoughtless.
She agreed Dr McQuaid had offered to waive his fee and make a £500 donation to charity.
Mr Murphy said he and his wife separated about two years ago and in June 1995 he received a copy of Dr McQuaid's bill. He had not known his former wife had seen Dr McQuaid and felt if she had it was none of his business and that he should not have been informed.
"I phoned him and told him I was appalled and that I considered it a breach of the confidentiality of his profession that he would let me know he was seeing any patient," Mr Murphy said.
He told Mr Gleeson there were two Mike Murphys working in RTE and each received post belonging to the other. As a joint TV and radio presenter his mail was opened for him and often letters marked "Private and Confidential" were opened in error.
Mr Murphy said he was extremely angry about what had happened and although he had not sought an apology he had received one from Dr McQuaid.
Dry McQuaid said that on receiving a letter from Mrs Murphy's solicitors he had written back expressing his remorse for what had happened and offering to waive his fee and make a contribution to charity. He was very apologetic for the distress caused and said if she had sought an apology it would have been forthcoming.
He told Mr O'Moore that while his meeting with Mrs Murphy was a professional consultation he did not regard her as a patient who needed to be treated. He considered her to be someone who was in crisis At the time he was aware the Murphys were estranged and were not living together.
Judge Smyth reserved judgment.
April 12th, 1847: In his unmistakable, apocalyptic style, John Mitchel writes about "next year's famine".
His leading article in the Nation asserts: "Into every seaport in Ireland are now thronging thousands of farmers, with their families, who have chosen to leave their lands untilled and unsown, to sell horses and stock and turn all into money to go to America, carrying off both the money and the industry that created it, and leaving a more helpless mass of misery and despair behind them."
The ground remains uncultivated because of mutual distrust between landlord and tenant. The landlord is afraid that, if he provides seed, the tenant will consume the crop and not pay his rent. The tenant is in dread that, if he sows grain, the landlord will pounce on the crop as soon as it is cut. Mitchel continues: "And the doomed wretches, who can neither leave their country nor live in it when grubbed up weeds will no longer sustain them, when the agonies of hunger are over, and all the bitterness of death is long past and gone, patiently make themselves at home with death take their last look at the sun and the blasted earth, and then build themselves up in their cabins, that they may die with their children and not be seen by passers by. And thrice and four times blessed are they who have already perished thus, instead of being kept half alive, up on stinted rations and charity soup, to die more surely, more hideously, next year.
An increasingly radical Mitchel warns the landlords: "Let them not press to a decision, sooner than they can help the momentous questions: that lie unsolved between them: and the occupier that might have lain unsolved for many a day if the Famine had not visited us. Men are on all sides beginning to ask to whom, after all, this land belongs; whether the rights of property appertain only to property in rents; whether the royal patent can confer the power of awarding life or death at the patentee's pleasure; whether the tillers of the soil are to go on for ever borrowing or hiring land, instead of owning it."
The Nation has looked "in no unfriendly spirit" on the gentry's attempt to form a parliamentary grouping at Westminster. But what are they doing now, it asks, "when the abyss is yawning for them and for their country? Oh, heaven! moving clauses in Poor Law Bills ... Have they considered whether improvements' include graveyards? Have they satisfied themselves that there will be anybody left to pay the rates, in large divisions or in small? Are they deaf and blind to the fact that the peasantry, the people, the masses, the great rent paying machine itself, is falling fast into disorder and ruin?"
Adder deaf and stone blind, Mitchel concludes, "and if so then doomed to destruction irretrievable, signal and unpitied". The social order is not to be disturbed lightly, but "the existence of a nation is more precious still".