The Chief Justice has asked what exactly the public interest was in having the Laffoy Commission inquiry into child abuse investigate vaccination trials on children in institutions run by religious orders in the 1960s. Mary Carolan reports.
In a Supreme Court appeal by a retired UCD professor against an order requiring him to give evidence of his involvement in the trials, Mr Justice Keane said expert medical reports had indicated no evidence that any children were adversely affected by the trials. There was no question of any experimentation, he said.
Mr Justice Hardiman remarked that the trials were properly written up in the British Medical Journal. Given this, Mr Justice Keane asked how issues relating to the conduct of the vaccinations were linked to the remit of the Laffoy Commission.
When counsel for the commission said there was clearly public agitation over the matter, the Chief Justice said the court did not know this. There had been a reference to some concerns raised in the Dáil but the court did not know how well-founded those concerns were.
Mr Justice Keane said the Supreme Court was surely concerned with the public interest in the trials, as the court had to consider that interest when determining issues relating to the constitutional rights of retired Prof Patrick Meenan (86).
The Chief Justice referred to lengthy correspondence between lawyers for the commission and Prof Meenan. Rather than involving lawyers, there might have been a better way of determining whether Prof Meenan was medically fit to give evidence, he said, but he stressed he was not commenting on the professionalism of the lawyers involved.
The four other Supreme Court judges also suggested that matters relating to Prof Meenan's giving evidence might have been handled in a better way.
The judges were hearing Prof Meenan's appeal against a High Court order requiring him to attend the commission's public hearings and give evidence about his involvement in the conduct of the vaccination trials. The appeal concluded yesterday and judgment was reserved to tomorrow.
Solicitors for Prof Meenan had indicated he intended not to comply, on age and health grounds, with the direction, issued on March 31st.
The commission applied to the High Court in May seeking to have its order enforced while Prof Meenan's lawyers also sought to challenge the direction.
In a reserved judgment last month, Mr Justice Smyth granted the commission's application for an order requiring the professor to attend before it at a public hearing and also rejected his challenge to the direction.
The commission says the vaccination trials were, in general terms, conducted by Prof Meenan and then Dr Irene Hillery, both attached to UCD, in 1960 and 1961 in five mother-and-baby homes and in one children's institution, all run by religious orders. Prof Meenan was then head of UCD's department of microbiology and applied medicine.
Mr Patrick Hanratty SC, for Prof Meenan, agreed that various reports, including from the chief medical officer of the Department of Health, had made no suggestion that any child who received the vaccine had been adversely affected as a result.
Given the various expert reports on the trials, he could not see how the commission could have expressed concerns about Prof Meenan's role. There was no allegation of any wrongdoing by Prof Meenan.
The core legal issues related to fair procedures. While the commission knew there was a serious issue regarding Prof Meenan's health, it had refused to consider it. It had insisted that the issue be decided at a public hearing into which other parties could have an input. This was an unnecessary intrusion into his client's constitutional right to privacy.
Mr Frank Clarke SC, for the commission, said he wished to caution the court against taking a view on the facts when it did not have all the documents in the case.
He said the commission remained willing to hear any application made to it by Prof Meenan regarding his health. It had never compelled Prof Meenan to attend any hearing regarding his capacity to give evidence. He could have been represented by lawyers.