A judge has been told that a hospital doctor accidentally glued a four-year-old child’s eyelids together while closing a laceration above her left eye.Barrister Anita Finucane, counsel for Saoirse Feeney, who is now aged eight, told Judge Sinead Ní Chúlachain in the Circuit Civil Court on Tuesday that the matter had been extremely distressing for the child.Finucane said the child had to have her eye irrigated four times to separate her eyelids and for six weeks after the incident had to have antibiotic drops applied four times daily.Saoirse Feeney sued Children’s Health Ireland through her mother, Caroline Feeney, of Castletown, Leixlip, Co Kildare. Children’s Health Ireland, which has its head office at Herberton, St James’s Walk, Rialto, Dublin 8 is responsible for the control and management of emergency treatment for children under 15 at Crumlin Hospital, Co Dublin. Finucane told the court that in August 2022, Saoirse Feeney suffered a laceration above her left eye after hitting her head on a wooden table in the family home. Her mother, who is a registered paediatric nurse, applied steri-strips to stem the bleeding before bringing her to the emergency department of Crumlin Hospital. Counsel told the court that a decision had been made to glue the laceration and during the procedure excessive glue had been used, resulting in glue dripping into the patient’s eye. It led to an irrigation treatment with three litres of fluid to remove what was described as “copious glue use”.“The irrigation procedure was an extremely distressing event,” Finucane said.The judge heard that Saoirse Feeney’s left eye was glued shut and a real concern emerged that her eyesight could be impaired. She was taken to Temple Street Children’s hospital for the separation of her eyelids.A large amount of glue remained struck to the child’s eyebrows for some time, and some of her bottom eyelashes fell out as they became matted together. The child had felt very self-conscious as she attended school for the first time nine days after the treatment. Some of her eyelashes turned inwards, which compounded her distress.Finucane said Children’s Health Ireland made a settlement offer of €15,000 compensation to Saoirse Feeney, and counsel recommended acceptance of it to the court.The judge said it was very lucky that there had been no permanent injury to the child’s eye, and approved the settlement offer which, she said, was at the top of recommended compensation for transient eye injury. In a brief conversation with the judge, Saoirse Feeney said she now had no memory whatsoever of her experiences at the hospital.