The High Court has dismissed a challenge by the Northern Area Health Board to the conduct of an inquest into the death of a patient at St Ita's Hospital, Portrane. The Dublin County Coroner, Dr Kieran Geraghty, decided to hold an inquest into the death of Mrs Rosaleen O'Reilly (67) after concern was expressed by her daughter, Mrs Carmel Kitching, about the care she received at St Ita's.
The inquest opened on October 17th, 2000, but was adjourned pending judicial review proceedings in the High Court. The court heard that Mrs O'Reilly was admitted to St Ita's on January 18th, 2000, for "respite care" and died on February 25th. A pathologist's report concluded she died of pneumonia.
In his judgment, Mr Justice Kelly noted the board had criticised the decision to hold an inquest. In his view, it was not open to the board to do that. There were strong judicial authorities supportive of the notion that a coroner might decide to hold an inquest in circumstances such as this case for the purpose of allaying rumour or suspicion.
The judge also noted that the board argued that, as the post-mortem had given a clear finding that death was as a result of acute broncho-pneumonia, and there was no dispute about that, the coroner should not have allowed Mrs O'Reilly's daughter to give the evidence she did.
The effect of this argument was that, in any case where a post-mortem produced a clear cause of death, there was little scope for a coroner's inquest. Apart from turning a coroner into something of a "cypher", this argument left little scope for the entitlement of a coroner's jury to attach a recommendation to any verdict with a view to preventing such a death occurring again.