THE DEATH has taken place of Frank Deasy, a Dublin-born scriptwriter who received an Emmy award for his work on ITV’s Prime Suspect series.
Deasy (49), who had cancer of the liver and had been awaiting a transplant for seven months, died yesterday in a hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland. In recent days, he had spoken publicly about the problems faced by those on transplant waiting lists and stressed the need for more people to register as organ donors.
Deasy had an emotive article about organ donation published in the Observer newspaper last Sunday and, on Monday, he spoke at length on RTÉ Radio’s Liveline. This prompted thousands of people to register as organ donors with the Irish Kidney Association.
“I am only one of thousands of patients on organ transplant lists in Britain, living on our own invisible death row,” he said. “The solution is there, the procedure is there, and the budgets are allocated for the surgery, but the one thing they don’t have is organs.”
Deasy was diagnosed with a primary liver tumour in January. Four-and-half-years ago he had surgery to remove a tumour.
His brother, Declan, said Frank was called to the Royal Infirmary Hospital on Wednesday night as a compatible liver donor had been found. However, complications arose during the procedure and Deasy was pronounced dead at about 7.30am yesterday. He is survived by his wife Marie and their three children.
Deasy grew up in Artane in north Dublin and studied at Trinity College before working for the Eastern Health Board. He began making videos and, in 1988, he wrote and co-directed the film The Courier, which starred Gabriel Byrne in a story about a reformed drug user attempting to crack a drug-dealing operation.
In 1991, he wrote The Grass Arena, which starred Pete Postlethwaite. Tim Roth and Julia Ormond appeared in his next work, Captives.
His biggest success came in 2006, when he wrote the miniseries Prime Suspect: The Final Act, in which Helen Mirren resumed her role as Det Supt Jane Tennison. The programme was critically acclaimed and Deasy was nominated for the best writer Bafta award in 2007. He later won the Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Mini-series.
He wrote the BBC mini-series The Passion, which aired last year, and his Dublin-based crime thriller Father Son aired on RTÉ during the summer. He was working on a project about the Medicis before his death.
The Irish Kidney Association’s Mark Murphy paid tribute to Deasy for speaking publicly about his illness, which he said had prompted a phenomenal public response: “We have been inundated with applications for donor cards. Up to yesterday we had 7,500 individual requests via our text message service alone.”
Declan Deasy said his brother had not spoken publicly about his illness until recently and hoped his words would continue to have impact. “I hope the momentum is maintained and it gets into schools and hospitals and doctors surgeries,” he said on RTÉ’s Liveline.
