The High Court has refused Anne Weldon’s application for judicial review of a Lourdes Hospital Redress Board decision that her case was not eligible to be considered under the Lourdes Hospital Redress Scheme. Kearns P. held that the Board had afforded her fair procedures and that her nine-month delay in bringing proceedings was not reasonably explained.
Weldon underwent a planned hysterectomy at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda on 18 June 1990. Dr Michael Neary also performed a bilateral oophorectomy. The Scheme was established in 2007 to provide redress to women who had undergone specified unnecessary procedures carried out by Neary between 1974 and 1998.
Weldon applied to the Board in July 2007. The Board asked her to provide a gynaecologist’s report stating that the operation was medically unwarranted. She did not provide such a report. The Board commissioned two medical reports itself; both concluded that the procedures were medically warranted because of extensive endometriosis. On 28 August 2008, the Board told Weldon that she was “not eligible to be considered for redress.” It later sent her solicitor the reports and confirmed that its decision was final and the case closed.
Weldon argued that the Board should have disclosed the reports before deciding her application, so she could respond to their conclusions. She also challenged the Board’s reliance on medical evidence it had commissioned and disputed that she had delayed in seeking judicial review. Her solicitor later sent the Board a report from consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist Roger Clements, but the judgment records that the Board had by then been wound up.
The respondents argued that the Scheme required an expert report to establish that the operation was medically unwarranted, and that Weldon had been told repeatedly to obtain one. They also argued that the time for judicial review began when she was notified of the refusal in August 2008, or at the latest when the Board confirmed its decision was final in September. The application for leave to seek judicial review was made on 26 May 2009.
The court found Weldon had notice that a determination would be made and ample opportunity to make her case. It said she had failed to take the step that would have made her eligible for consideration, and that the Board went beyond what was required by commissioning reports itself.
The court treated 28 August 2008 as the date the grounds for judicial review first arose. It found no reasonable explanation for the nine-month delay and concluded that the delay precluded relief. Alongside its conclusion that there had been no want of fair procedures, the court refused the relief sought. The judgment does not state that the court assessed entitlement to compensation on its merits.