Analysis The vaccination trials investigation has now been put in question, writes Carol Coulter, Legal Affairs Correspondent
The question of vaccination trials on infants who were resident in children's homes was first raised in the media in 1989. Concerns were expressed that these trials were conducted without full and proper consent from the parents or guardians of the children concerned, many of whom had living parents.
Past residents of these homes campaigned for a public inquiry into the conduct of these trials and in 2001 the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, under the chairmanship of Ms Justice Laffoy, was asked to add this issue to its work.
It had been set up to examine allegations of sexual, physical and emotional abuse of residents of residential institutions, following the States of Fear programme which carried harrowing accounts of such abuse.
At the time of the vaccination trials in the 1960s, Prof Patrick Meenan held the chair of microbiology in UCD and in 1973 was appointed Dean of the Medical Faculty there. He was responsible for importing the vaccines, and was one of the six authors of study of the results reported in the British Medical Journal.
He was therefore central to any investigation of what happened during the trials.
Prof Meenan is now 86 and his doctors have informed the commission his health might not withstand his having to give evidence.This case is not about whether or not he should have been called to give evidence.
Rather it concerned a dispute between him and the Laffoy Commission about whether he should have had to deal with the matter of his health at a public hearing, and whether details of his condition might have been disclosed to a third party.
He challenged the instruction to attend the hearing on the grounds that the direction to attend such a hearing was in breach of his rights to natural and constitutional justice, his constitutional rights to privacy and to bodily integrity.
Yesterday the Supreme Court upheld his appeal against the High Court, which had found against him.
In doing so, it made clear that it was not ruling on the remit of the Laffoy Commission in general. The Chief Justice, Mr Justice Keane, raised the question of whether alternative ways could be found of obtaining evidence from the professor.
The court found that the requirements being imposed on Prof Meenan were excessive in the light of his age and infirmity.
Mr Justice Hardiman said: "I do not think Prof Meenan was treated fairly with due regard to his years and affliction."
However, there is implicit criticism in the ruling of the decision to ask the Laffoy Commission to examine this issue in the first place.
Mr Justice Keane said that these trials "appear to have only the most tenuous connection, if any, with the appalling social evil of the sexual and physical abuse of children in institutions, which was the specific area into which the commission was established to inquire."
Mr Justice Hardiman said: "The question of the propriety of the 1960 vaccine trial is as far removed from the common understanding of the term 'child abuse' as can be."
These judicial statements may provide fruitful grounds for further challenges to this aspect of the commission's work.