A multi-million euro settlement has been reached between the Health Service Executive and a woman who claimed she contracted a rare brain disease from parrots.
22-year-old Patricia Ingle from Murroe, Co Limerick, is paralysed and brain damaged after contracting the disease in 2008 while she was an employed at the Petmania store in Limerick.
Ms Ingle had taken the action against the pet shop and had also sued the HSE over its failure to diagnose her condition in time.
Her former employer denied liability in the case. Lawyers for the HSE said it would be pursuing the pet shop for liability, but this case was also settled.
The settlement is the largest one ever reached for a structured payment scheme and will run to millions of euro over the course of Ms Ingle's lifetime.
The exact amount for the structured payments will be decided in two years' time when the case comes before the court again pending the introduction of legislation to allow for such payments.
A lump sum payment in excess of €3m will also be made immediately.
At the opening of the trial last week, the court heard that Patricia Ingle began working for Petmania in 2007 at the age of 19.
Her lawyers said she was given no health and safety training or warnings about the dangers of working with animals.
The store did not provide gloves or masks for staff and a health and safety manual the company claims it issued to staff did not contain anything about health or safety.
Counsel for Ms Ingle Dermot Gleeson said the booklet was 'remarkable' in that it made no mention at all about the risks of working with animals.
It did not even mention the word animal but instead contained information about employment rights. In any case, he said, Ms Ingle has no recollection of ever receiving it.
Mr Gleeson said experts would say the single most significant risk of working in pet shops is the risk of contracting infections from creatures.
Animals in the store were neither screened nor treated because they were of 'relatively low value' he said.
It is alleged she contracted the disease as a result of inhaling dust from the faeces of parrots suffering from chlamydia psittacosis - an airborne infection which can be transmitted from birds to humans.
The court also heard that the month before she became ill an internal inspection of the stores noted that the bird cages were dirty and that it scored six out of 12 in a hygiene rating.
The court heard that on 20 August 2008 Ms Ingle suffered violent headaches and vomiting.
She was sent to the Mid-Western Regional Hospital but was allowed home and told to rest.
There was some slight improvement over the following 11 days, but on 1 September she became ill again and was admitted to hospital.
Her hospital records would have shown she worked with animals because she had previously attended hospital after being bitten by a rat.
Mr Gleeson said she remained in the Mid-Western Regional Hospital for 58 hours before being transferred to Cork.
At that stage she had suffered brain damage, could not move her limbs or speak. She has remained in that condition since.
He said the remarkable thing about this was that her condition had deteriorated while she was in an acute hospital run by the HSE and entirely in the sight of medical practitioners.
There was a failure to recognise what was going on in those 58 hours and if there had been proper recognition of her symptoms, some if not all of her current difficulties could have been prevented, he said.
He said doctors failed to recognise in time, despite numerous symptoms, that she needed a neurologist which was only available in Cork University Hospital.
But by the time she reached Cork she was irreversibly brain damaged.
She now remains in hospital in Limerick, is dependent on a ventilator, has to be tube fed and is in a wheelchair.
The company disputed the claim that she contracted the disease claimed and denied that any condition was contracted while working at the store.
Today, Patricia Ingle said she was grateful for the legal assistance in her case.
'Only for it I would be imprisoned in a hospital room through no fault of my own. Now I am free,' she said.
She also thanked her family and friends and her solicitor, Susie Elliot.
