Dear Sir or Madam,

 

I wrote to you on January 27th 2005 and a copy of the text of the letter (together with the Post Office recorded delivery receipt) can be seen at www location http://www.constitutionofireland.com/ConvenorWH-SSB.htm 

 

Shortly after I sent the above mentioned letter to you, I received an e-mail from Mr Hugh Mills (Sperrin-Lakeland Trust) which included an attachment letter to me dated January 26th 2005, and which contains information relating to the investigation his team has carried out into my case.

 

A copy of the text of the January 26th 2005 letter to me from Mr Mills can be seen at www address http://www.constitutionofireland.com/HughMillsLetter26Jan2005.htm

 

As I am not happy with the response from Mr Mills at the address immediately above, I wish to request that the Northern Ireland Western Health and Social Services Board now carry out an Independent Review (of the kind Mr Mills has mentioned to me in his letter).

 

I also wish to respectfully make the following comments regarding Mr Mills letter to me dated January 26th 2005, which I would like all involved in the Independent Review to take full account of please.  (Please note that all of the comments below are closely related to handwritten notes I made within hours of the events in question taking place.)

 

1) On Wednesday December 8th 2004, and at her her request, I wrote out a list of UK GPs I have received treatment from in the past for a senior ward nurse named Sally who seemed to work very closely with Dr Foster. The list I gave her included mention of treatment I received for depression - WHICH  HAD  TURNED  SUICIDAL - by a consultant psychiatrist at Hill End Hospital (near where I lived at the time in St Albans, Hertfordshire) in or around August 1994.

All things considered, and despite the Hill End information I provided on December 8th, it is far from clear to me that Dr Foster ever took account of the fact that I have a proven medical track-record for being prone, and vulnerable, to reactive depression. In St Albans, the depression was a reaction to the fact that, as an indirect consequence of the Berlin Wall being pulled down some years earlier, the area at that time (i.e. around 1994) had become an unemployment black-spot for the type of work I normally do.

2) Towards the end of the consultation I had on Thursday December 9th 2004 with Dr Foster and his team, it was my understanding that Dr Foster believed I was not suffering from any form of mental illness; that I did need protection; and that I would be given help from Social Services until such time as I had made my situation safe through the services of a solicitor operating in Northern Ireland. I wish to STRESS that it was at this particular point in time that I agreed with Dr Foster's findings and conclusions, and I thanked him for what I believed (and still believe) was an accurate, helpful, and responsible assessment of my situation.

Just before leaving the December 9th meeting, I left Dr Foster and his team two items of correspondence - for the purpose of accurately and efficiently outlining the legal difficulties and pressures I was reacting to in current times. Item 1 was a printed copy of an e-mail to solicitor Ciara Macklin dated December 6th 2004, and item 2 was a printed copy of an e-mail dated November 29th 2004 to solicitor Mr Geraghty which contained some handwritten notes (mainly intended for Mr Geraghty) relating to an UNLAWFUL  SEWAGE  DISCHARGE from the primary school in the village in County Galway where my home in the Republic of Ireland is located. The text of item 1 (to Ms Macklin) can be seen at the end of the set of e-mails at www address http://www.constitutionofireland.com/FairMurtaghEmail21Dec2004.htm , and the text of item 2 (to Mr Geraghty) can be seen at http://www.constitutionofireland.com/FairMurtaghEmail29Nov2004.htm

 

Please note that I can see nothing in Mr Mills letter to suggest that his team were aware of the information in the two above mentioned pieces of written evidence I handed to Dr Foster and his team on December 9th, and which were (as far as I know) placed in my file with one or two other pieces of supporting evidence I handed to nursing staff during the week or so I was in hospital. One of these additional items was a copy of a letter dated October 10th 2002 from law firm Fair-Murtagh, which I handed to senior nurse Sean McAleer on Saturday December 11th 2004, and which clearly shows that a warrant was issued for my arrest on October 9th 2002 in Loughrea, County Galway.

 

3) Approximately one hour before my second consultation with Dr Foster and his team on Monday December 13th 2004, and in response to a request for preparatory information from nurse Sally, I gave her a handwritten note which briefly set out my main concerns at that specific time; and, I asked her to try and make sure Dr Foster was made aware of them before the meeting.  A scanned copy of the handwritten note in question note can be seen at http://www.constitutionofireland.com/13Dec2004NoteToDrFoster.htm

 

Later, when I went to the meeting, I was extremely surprised to learn that Dr Foster seemed to have already decided to throw me out of the hospital as soon as possible, and that there would be no help from social services for me: and consequently no help with finding a lawyer in Northern Ireland who would act on my behalf and in my best interests. When he related his intentions to me, I told him (in the presence of his support staff) that I felt shocked and amazed by what he was doing.

At one point I asked Dr Foster if he had read the two items of correspondence referred to above (to Ms Macklin and Mr Geraghty), and he told me that he had - while looking me at me in a way which suggested the difficulties (for me) represented by the correspondence in question meant nothing whatsoever to him.

Following on from that, and in an effort to try and change his mind about suddenly throwing me out of the hospital, I very reluctantly related an additional difficulty for me that I have so far said very little about to anybody.  This relates to the fact that the use of Shannon Airport for United States military aircraft involved in the war with Iraq may well (to the very best of my knowledge and judgement) be completely unlawful as things stand at the present time. This is on account of the fact that the arrangement is an an "international agreement" in Republic of Ireland law of the kind that comes within the scope of Article 29.5.1 of the Republic of Ireland's written constitution - and which very clearly states: "Every international agreement to which the State becomes a party shall be laid before Dail Eireann."  The problem is that this agreement never has been laid before Dail Eireann - as is ALSO the case with the international Aarhus Convention Agreement (which I have written extensively about to several people).

I further tried to explain very briefly to Dr Foster that, in the absence of any explanation from anybody in the Republic of Ireland as to why senior public servants there had suddenly reactivated their attempts to corruptly criminalise me (and possibly imprison me), after a lengthy period of doing absolutely nothing of this kind (between May 2003 and December 2004), I had reduced things down in my own mind to three or four separate sets of possible reasons: one of which was that they feared I might start telling large numbers of people about the very shaky (to say the least) legal situation relating to the present use of Shannon Airport for US military aircraft coming and going to and from Iraq; and, that in the weeks just before December 2004, I had discussed a newspaper report of what seemed to me to be a very bizarre (and for me quite worrying) court case which took place a few months ago in the Republic of Ireland involving a lady with strong Galway connections who had damaged a United States military aircraft at Shannon Airport.  Again, Dr Foster responded in a way that left me feeling he had absolutely no time whatsoever to consider anything of this sort in connection with my particular case.

A short time after the meeting, Nurse Sally told me she that she had given Dr Foster my note before the meeting; but, that he had already decided to throw me out of the hospital well before he saw it, and that consequently he was not interested in it.

 

That evening, I was also informed by nurse Davy Mc Grew that if I wanted a second opinion on the decision to discharge me, that I would have to get it in the Republic of Ireland.  When I asked him if he could let me have written confirmation of this bizarre suggestion, he told me he couldn't. This incident is just one of several examples I could give of signs of panic at the time, by a number of people rushing to get me out of the place as quickly as they possibly could. 

 

4) Early on the morning of Tuesday December 14th 2004, the female charge-nurse on ward duty told me she tried several times during her shift (which started at approximately 8 pm the evening before) to get the police to come and talk to me at the hospital about my security concerns; but, that they (i.e. the police) were not willing to do so. She was with another member of staff at the time she related this to me, and she made no secret of the fact that she was very concerned and unhappy about the way I was being treated.

 

5) At around 11 am on Tuesday December 14th Nurse Davy Mc Grew helped me take my belongings to my car; and, in a very discreet and supportive kind of way, he talked for a short time with me in a manner which strongly suggested that: a) the staff on the ward were not impressed with the way I was being treated; and b) that on account of the way the hospital was administered, there genuinely was nothing of any significance that he or any of his nursing colleagues could do about my situation. 

 

6) I have no recollection of ever meeting the person named Seamus McGarvey mentioned in Mr Mills letter to me. This being the case, I'm very puzzled as to why he appears to have played such an influential role in having me suddenly thrown out of hospital.  I also find myself wondering if he has ever looked at my hospital medical file, and, if he has any medical qualifications?

I look forward to hearing of your decision regarding my request for an Independent Review of my case at your earliest convenience please.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

William Finnerty.