A mother who killed her three children is seeking permission to bring a legal challenge over a coroner’s decision on the medical evidence to be heard at their inquests.
In 2021 paediatric nurse Deirdre Morley was found not guilty by reason of insanity of murdering her three children, Conor (9), Darragh (7) and Carla (3), at the family home in Newcastle, Co Dublin, on January 24th, 2020.
Postmortems found all three children died from suffocation.
In proceedings filed on Monday, Ms Morley is seeking permission for a judicial review of a decision by Dublin Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane not to call evidence from medical professionals who had treated Ms Morley before the children’s deaths.
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Ms Morley is being represented in the action by CM Haughey Solicitors, which said it could not comment as the matter was before the courts.
Andrew McGinley, the children’s father, is not party to the case, but said he fully supported it.
He said the financial cost of such litigation was the only reason he had not issued such proceedings himself.
“It has always been my hope that something positive would come out of the inquests of Conor, Darragh and Carla. This inquest doesn’t bring them back to life, it doesn’t. It’s not about blame or exoneration, it’s about saving other children and other patients. I don’t want other people going through what I’ve been through,” he said.
Mr McGinley said there were circumstances and decisions that “contributed to the deaths of my children” and he wanted these answers to be provided through these inquests by the people who were active in Ms Morley’s care.
The application comes after a dispute emerged at a preliminary hearing of the children’s inquests in October over the scope of the evidence to be heard.
Dr Cullinane ruled that evidence to be heard at the inquest about the state of Ms Morley’s mental health would be given by two forensic consultant psychiatrists who had given evidence at her 2021 trial.
At that hearing the coroner said she had asked the psychiatrists, Brenda Wright and Mary Davoren, to prepare new reports for the inquest.
But the decision was questioned by Ms Morley’s legal team.
Speaking at the hearing, Fiona Gallagher, for Ms Morley, said the inquest should call the medical professionals who had treated her client in the six months before the tragedy.
Ms Gallagher said evidence from treating doctors should be examined to ensure her client’s mental state was “inquired into in a comprehensive and appropriate fashion”.
The evidence at issue includes medical records from doctors who treated her in St Patrick’s Hospital, Dublin, as well as medics in Clondalkin and in Tallaght, Co Dublin.
Simon Mills SC, for consultant psychiatrist Olivia Gibbons, who treated Ms Morley in St Patrick’s, told the hearing that any evidence from Dr Gibbons would not be contemporaneous.
He said Ms Morley was found not guilty of her children’s murders by reason of insanity following a 2021 trial at the Central Criminal Court.
Since an earlier preliminary inquest hearing in 2023, Ms Morley and her legal team have “at no point in the intervening two-and-a-half years” indicated this verdict was incorrect, he said at the hearing.
The inquest is to be held on a date to be announced.
