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IHRD-51

Independence of Coroner Witness Statements

Hyponatraemia Inquiry · Report of the Inquiry into Hyponatraemia-related Deaths · Issued 31 January 2018 · Addressed to: HSC Trusts

Government responseDepartment of Health NI: Accepted (Mar 2021)

DeliveryDepartment of Health (Northern Ireland) says completed (Jun 2023)

Recommendation, verbatim from the inquiry

●Inquiry recommendation

Trust employees should not record or otherwise manage witness statements made by Trust staff and submitted to the Coroner's office.

Hyponatraemia Inquiry, Report of the Inquiry into Hyponatraemia-related Deaths · 31 Jan 2018 Source PDF →

Published evidence summary

AI-generated evidence summary

In June 2023, the Department of Health (Northern Ireland) listed this recommendation regarding the independence of coroner witness statements as actioned in its published implementation update (Department of Health (Northern Ireland), Jun 2023). The department had previously reported in October 2022 that the measure remained in progress, noting that although initial work had been completed, "further work is now required to ensure appropriate implementation at service level" (Department of Health (Northern Ireland), Oct 2022).

AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 26 Sep 2026.

About this summary
This recommendation applies across many organisations. The record above reflects central policy activity; adoption in individual organisations may vary.

Report-level response context

The Minister of Health accepted all 96 recommendations together, in one sentence of a written statement to the Northern Ireland Assembly on 25 March 2021. That sentence is not a response to any one recommendation alone, and the Department of Health published no response to each recommendation. The Department's statements of 31 January, 2 February and 30 March 2018 contain no acceptance of the recommendations.

Government response

●Department of Health NI · Accepted · 25 Mar 2021

Words of: Mr Swann, Minister of Health, written ministerial statement to the Northern Ireland Assembly, 25 March 2021

My Department accepts the recommendations of the O'Hara Report in their entirety.

Extract from: Department of Health - Inquiry into Hyponatraemia Related Deaths (IHRD) Implementation Programme Update

Delivery

●Department of Health (Northern Ireland) says completed · 19 Jun 2023

IHRD Phase 1 Recommendations – ACTIONED

From: IHRD Recommendations Phase 1 & Phase 2 (Updated June 2023)

Site note: These words are from the Department of Health's document linked on this page. The Department's website asks automated tools not to fetch its document files directly, so the site cites the page that links the document.

Site note: This is the heading of a table in the Department of Health's June 2023 list of the recommendations. It covers all 66 actions in that table together. It is the Department's table heading, not a statement about this recommendation alone. In October 2022 the Department also said that "full implementation of the 96 recommendations is by no means complete", which refers to the programme as a whole.

Earlier statements on delivery (0)

●Department of Health (Northern Ireland) · 28 Oct 2022

the 20 actions, to be overseen by the IHRD Programme Team, where initial work has been completed by the Workstreams and Sub-groups, but where further work is now required to ensure appropriate implementation at service level.

From: IHRD Implementation Programme Update - Departmental Statement October 2022 (document heading: Update from the Department of Health on the implementation of the report of the Inquiry into Hyponatraemia-related Deaths)

Site note: These words are from the Department of Health's document linked on this page. The Department's website asks automated tools not to fetch its document files directly, so the site cites the page that links the document.

Site note: The Department's October 2022 statement gives this passage once, for a group of 20 actions, and does not list the recommendations in the group. The site places this recommendation in it from the Department's per-action list of the same date, where Phase 2A holds 20 actions.

How this page is built

The recommendation and the government responses are verbatim from primary documents. Delivery statements and other bodies' findings are shown in their own words, each with its source. The summary is written by this site and labelled as such. The Index does not paraphrase sources or characterise intent; it records what has been published.