The High Court has granted Charlotte Mulhall leave to pursue a judicial review challenge to the end of temporary transfers from Limerick Prison to Dublin for visits with her son, finding an arguable case that the change significantly interfered with her family rights.
Mr Justice Barr ruled on 20 April 2021 that Mulhall was out of time to challenge her transfer from the Dóchas Centre in Mountjoy to Limerick Prison on 24 December 2018. She had been transferred immediately after an incident involving a female prison warder. Mulhall said it was a beauty treatment; the respondents said the transfer was made for operational reasons. She was not charged with a prison-rule breach.
The judge rejected her request to extend the deadline. He said she knew of the transfer and its likely connection to the incident, but took no step to challenge it for eight months. Later requests for information and delayed responses to her solicitor did not establish grounds for extending time, because those requests came after the applicable three-month period.
The separate challenge concerned the end of temporary transfers to Dublin for visits with her son. The arrangement had enabled visits in May and July 2019. The prison authorities later stopped the transfers, citing concerns that Mulhall was unsettled for weeks after returning to Limerick. The judge said the change was apparently made to promote her welfare, without consulting her, and that the Child and Family Agency and the child’s foster parents were unwilling to bring him to Limerick.
The court considered that the decision had the practical effect of removing the possibility of in-person visits. It found an arguable case that the change was disproportionate and interfered with family rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The judge said Mulhall might be entitled to a transfer back to the Dóchas Centre or, at minimum, restoration of temporary transfers to Dublin for visits.
This was a leave decision, not a final ruling on whether the visiting arrangement was unlawful or what remedy should be ordered. The court directed both sides to file further affidavits on Mulhall’s current position and prison visiting arrangements, including the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. It granted leave on specified reliefs and allowed two weeks for written submissions on the form of the final order.