Ireland's Eye: What's going on in the old sod this week

A look at news from around Ireland

Larger Text

Print

E-mail

Make a comment

Throngs of shoppers flooded Henry Street in Dublin on Saturday evening to start the holiday shopping season.

Photo by Eric Jones

Tweet

Clare Champion

Mother’s Instincts
TRUST your instincts.
That's the advice of a Dundalk mother who rushed her baby to hospital despite the fact that her GP had sent her home with antibiotics and an inhaler the previous day.
“My son, who is aged 17 months was ill and I was worried about him. He was very drowsy and irritable and had a rash from head to toe,” she recalls.
She brought him to the out of hours service where she ended up being seen by her own GP.  “He gave me antibiotics and an inhaler and sent me home,” the mother said.
She says that her son's condition deteriorated the following day.
“The rash was worse and I could hardly see his face. I rushed him to Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry, and as I was sitting there holding him he took a fit.
“He didn't have a high temperature and the staff said it was unusual for him to have convulsions without a fever, and they began treating him for meningitis,” she recalls.
Her son was transferred to Craigavon Hospital where he underwent tests and spent five days in hospital before being discharged home.
He continued to receive antibiotics for two days after going home, and the rest of the family were also treated with antibiotics.
“The doctors weren't able to say for 100 percent that he had meningitis but that is what they treated him for,” she says.
“It was very frightening, especially when he had fits in my arms. I nearly lost my life as I thought he was gone.”
She feels that her GP should have referred her son to hospital.
“If I hadn't gone to Daisy Hill and he had those fits, I don't know what would have happened, but as it was I was in the right place at the right time,” she says.

Drogheda Independent

Grave Error
A SKERRIES man has spoken about his “disgust” at Fingal County Council's “cold and horrible” treatment of his family in the dogged pursuit of fees for the opening of a grave.
Adrian Kavanagh has condemned the council's behavior and said his elderly mother endured sleepless nights after the local authority sent a threatening letter to the family in pursuit of a debt arising from Kavanagh’s father's funeral.
The debt was owed to the council by the undertaker who presided over the funeral and had already been paid by the family, but having failed to collect the debt from the undertaker, the council pursued the innocent bereaved family.
It was days away from the first anniversary of the death of Frank Kavanagh when the letter from the council arrived at the home of his widow, Derry Kavanagh.
To add insult to injury, the letter was addressed to a “Mr. Kavanagh.”  The letter said that fees in respect of a burial at Ardla Cemetery had not been paid, and said that if the family had already paid the fees to the undertaker, it should contact the funeral directors to “ensure that payment is made to Fingal County Council.”
Adrian Kavanagh said that the letter threatened consequences for the family if the fees were not received by the council, including barring further family burials in the plot and preventing a headstone being erected to his dead father.
“My mother was very upset by it. She didn't sleep for days and she was terrified she would not be able to be buried there or if we put up a headstone that Fingal County Council would come along and tear it down,” he said.
Kavanagh said the family had decided to speak out because they want the practice to end, and for no other bereaved family to be put through the same trauma.
He said that his mother had been put through a “harrowing” experience and condemned the council's behavior as “cold and horrible.”
He said the family had done everything right and paid their bills and that the dispute should have remained between the council and the undertaker.

Print

E-mail

Tweet