The High Court has refused an application seeking the release of a woman from the Community Unit for Older Persons in Dalkey, finding that her continued placement there under wardship orders was lawful.
The inquiry followed an appeal from an earlier refusal of the application. The Court of Appeal directed the High Court to examine the legality of the woman’s detention and required the HSE or its nominee to certify the grounds. The HSE’s Head of Service for Community Healthcare East certified that she was at the unit under a placement order and had also been brought into wardship.
The woman’s son brought the application on her behalf. He argued that the High Court lacked jurisdiction to order involuntary placement in wardship and that her removal from the family home and admission to hospital without proper authority tainted the later orders. The HSE and the General Solicitor for Minors and Wards of Court disputed those arguments.
The judgment records that the woman was transferred from St Vincent’s University Hospital to the Dalkey unit under court orders. The judge said the Article 40.4.2 inquiry concerned the legality of her continuing detention at Dalkey. It did not give the court power to set aside the wardship orders or to rule generally on earlier periods of placement.
On the removal from the family home, the judge found on the balance of the evidence that it occurred with the consent of the son and the woman’s family, when she was mentally incapacitated. The judge also rejected the argument that events before the wardship orders made those orders, or later orders, unlawful.
The son’s central legal challenge was that the High Court had no power to detain a ward under the Courts (Supplemental Provisions) Act 1961. The judge accepted the HSE and notice party’s submissions that the jurisdiction to detain in wardship had passed from the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland to the High Court under section 9 of that Act. The court therefore found no lack of jurisdiction behind the orders authorising the woman’s placement.
The judge concluded that her continuing placement in Dalkey was lawful and refused the application. The ruling did not cancel or vary the wardship orders; the court said its Article 40 jurisdiction was limited to refusing release or ordering immediate release.