The family of Aoife Johnston say they don’t want any further engagement with the Department of Health on a planned memorial to the late Shannon teenager at University Hospital Limerick.
The family’s solicitor claims they’re feeling “utter disappointment” after experiencing “radio silence” on a proposed tribute to Aoife at the 96-bed block opened at the Dooradoyle facility last October.
16-year-old Leaving Cert student Aoife Johnston died in University Hospital Limerick’s Emergency Department in December 2022 after waiting 13 and a half hours for treatment for suspected sepsis.
Ahead of the opening of the first of three planned 96-bed blocks on the Dooradoyle campus last year, the Johnston family had engaged with the Department of Health on the potential for a memorial to Aoife in the new building.
From January 2025, the family and the department were in contact about this proposal, with Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill going as far as to suggest that the block be named after Aoife.
Photos of Aoife were provided to the department along with a poem, and Aoife’s mother Carol emailed a principal officer in the department in September to arrange a meeting after being invited to do so by the minister.
From this point on however, the family claims it experienced “radio silence” from the department, and the block was opened without a memorial of any kind in October.
Last month, Aoife’s father James, who campaigned for justice for his daughter, passed away after a battle with kidney cancer.
Solicitor for the Johnston family, Damien Tansey, says because the family feel they’ve been treated in an “insensitive and disrespectful manner”, they no longer want a memorial to be progressed.
The Department of Health has claimed an “external anti-spam filter tool” blocked the September email from Carol Johnston.
In addition to the memorial, the family has long been pushing for a statutory inquiry into Aoife’s death.
The Clarke Report published in September 2024 found that the circumstances of her passing were “almost certainly avoidable”.
Responding to Shannon Sinn Féin TD Donna McGettigan in the Dáil, Taoiseach Micheál Martin has refused to commit to such an inquiry, claiming the Clarke Report yielded “a lot” of important information.
