The Court of Appeal allowed an appeal over a claim for compensation arising from the treatment of a child at St Gabriel’s Hospital, Cabinteely, ruling that the hospital was not covered by the Residential Institutions Redress Board Act 2002.
In a judgment delivered on 9 December 2015, Mr Justice Gerard Hogan agreed with Mr Justice Kelly’s analysis. The appeal concerned a High Court decision by President Kearns. The judgment says the appeal was allowed solely because St Gabriel’s was not a scheduled institution under the Act. The court said it could not extend the scheme beyond the institutions specified by the Oireachtas.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as Mr H., was admitted to St Gabriel’s for nearly two years between about the ages of two and four, and again for a year from September 1964 to September 1965. He was referred from the National Children’s Hospital in Dublin by consultant paediatrician Dr Monica Lea Wilson.
The judgment describes evidence of a regime of prolonged bed rest, sometimes enforced with sedatives. Mr H. also said he was force-fed and subjected to frightening treatment, including being hung upside down through a window. Justice Hogan said the court had effectively heard only one side and acknowledged the difficulty of assessing events so long ago. He said, however, that the evidence before the Board and the Committee appeared to corroborate Mr H.’s account.
The judgment discusses a 2013 medico-legal report by paediatric cardiologist Dr Elliott A. Shinebourne, who considered that using bed rest as punishment was an abuse of authority and that the hospital’s regime would not have been accepted by a responsible paediatrician at the time. It also recounts that nineteen parents withdrew their children from the hospital amid concerns about treatment, and that St Gabriel’s closed in 1970.
The Act required abuse to have occurred while a child was resident at a scheduled institution. The court said Mr H. could satisfy the abuse requirement but not that institutional requirement. It also rejected reliance on a provision covering abuse outside a scheduled institution, because Mr H. was not resident in or being cared for at a scheduled institution when the events at St Gabriel’s occurred.
Justice Hogan said the result meant Mr H. would not receive compensation through the scheme for the abuse he said he suffered at St Gabriel’s. He suggested the Oireachtas might consider the matter in light of the case, while stressing that any change was for the legislature. The judgment records the Court of Appeal’s decision to allow the appeal; it does not set out a separate monetary award or order.