The vigil for Savita Halappanavar outside the Irish Consulate in Manhattan yesterday evening.

“Those of you who are not Irish, let me ask you something, and I ask you this with a heavy heart, because I do love my country, and I would love you to go there, and to love it too: I ask you to revise the positive impressions you may have had of the country up to now. Or, rather, park them; put those impressions aside. Because this overpowers everything. This changes everything. Until this Government does what the people are calling on it to do, I cannot in good conscience ask you to think well of my country, or to travel there. I can point you towards those 20,000 marchers in Dublin, certainly, and I can tell you how proud they make me, how moved I was by the photographs of their gathering – the only gathering worth our while until this changes. But nothing seems to worry this Government more than its image on an international scale, and so international solidarity, and international support for these calls for action are vital.

…Campaigners in Ireland have called this Savita’s Law, and tonight we join with the demand that the Irish government address this need to legislate as a matter of the greatest urgency. We are saying to them very clearly, nothing less will do. They must ensure that a tragedy like Savita’s never happens again, and they need to legislate now so that that suffering like Savita’s cannot be allowed to happen unnecessarily in Irish hospitals. And when they do that, I encourage you to think about Ireland in positive terms again.”

Belinda McKeon.

Organised by Annette Clancy (Pic 1) Belinda McKeon (pic 3), Max McGuinness (pic 5) and Colum McCann (pic 10)

Pics Hiroki Kobayashi

Meanwhile, last night in the dail:

And on Al Jazeera’s ‘The Stream’:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx8BZPc9a5c

Gerard O’Donnell, solicitor for Savita Halappanavar’s family spoke with Pat Kenny this morning on RTE R1 to relay Savita’s husband Praveen’s concerns over the make-up of the HSE inquiry.

Up to this afternoon the inquiry panel, included three consultants from University College Hospital Galway, the hospital where Savita died.

During the interview, Mr O’Donnell confirmed that, according to Praveen, the decision to not allow for a termination at the hospital was made… at consultant level.

Gerard O’Donnell: “(Praveen) has no faith in the HSE. It’s important to remember that he lost his wife, whilst under the care of the HSE. He feels that anybody who was appointed by the HSE, and paid for by the HSE, to conduct an inquiry into his wife’s death won’t meet the criteria that we would advise him as lawyers of getting to the truth.”
Kenny: “Now each individual who is in this team of seven, including the chairman, is an eminent person in their own right and in their own field. Is it simply that three of them are attached to University College Hospital Galway and it’s simply that?”

O’Donnell: “No, it’s not. It goes beyond that. One must remember that she died whilst in the care of the HSE. The HSE will be paying those to adjudicate upon that. Effectively, they’re on the payroll. We want evidence to be taken under oath, where it can be properly tested, by cross examination and all the proper legal procedures of an inquiry, an oral inquiry, held in public, to be adopted by the minister.”

Kenny: “So even if the three members of the committee, from the hospital in Galway were to step down voluntarily, with replacements from far and wide, that would not suffice for the family’s concerns?”

O’Donnell: “No again, because this is an inquiry that’s proposed to be held in private, a confidential inquiry. Evidence will not be given under oath, it won’t be cross-examined. So we wouldn’t be satisfied with that and nor would our client.”

Kenny: “It was suggested that your client Praveen is prepared to wait, if that is what it takes, and last night, on the Frontline, Joan Burton said the findings of this committee would not necessarily do away with the emergence of a sworn public inquiry at a later date.”

O’Donnell: “I just don’t know how the HSE will conduct an inquiry without his consent. They would have to look at her records. And we haven’t given any records, any consent, and neither has my client, to her records being, to Savita’s records to being looked at.”

Kenny: “One would expect that Praveen himself would be an important witness in this regard. He was by his wife’s side pretty much continuously in the throes of her final illness or her illness. If he is not prepared to testify then this committee of inquiry will go nowhere.”

O’Donnell: “That’s correct and he was with her right throughout, from when she went into the hospital on the Sunday until she died the following Sunday, or Saturday night, late on Saturday night. He was there with her all the time. He is a very, very important witness. He witnessed the request for a termination on a few occasions and he will be essential to any inquiry.”

Kenny: “Can you share with us, at what level this request was made, was it at consultant level, or at midwife level, or at nursing level?”

O’Donnell: “It was made at consultant level.”

Kenny: “At consultant level.”

Earlier: Farce

An Independent Inquiry

(Asia Press)