A three-month-old boy sustained “several fractures” including to his skull, wrists and legs, broken ribs and a bleed to his brain while in his parents’ care, a District Court has heard.
The court heard his parents “offered no explanation” as to how their son was injured to an emergency department doctor, saying they “did not know what happened”.
The paediatrician told the court: “They did not react when they were told how sick he was, and they did not ask a single question about his condition or treatment”. It was clear the skull fracture was a result of “forceful impact” trauma and the fractures were both “fresh” and “old”.
A full care order was granted, meaning the boy, now three years old and in foster care, would remain in care until the age of 18.
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“The child had been under interim care orders since being taken into care directly from hospital. The court heard [he] was now thriving in foster care,” said a report on the case published on Monday.
It is one of 77 cases of children subject to care orders detailed in the latest tranche of reports from the Child Law Project. The CLP compiles anonymised reports on childcare law cases, which are held in camera – ie closed to the public – in the courts.
These are the first reports since July 2024 as the CLP’s contract with the Department of Children expired in October 2024. A tendering process was initiated in March 2025. The CLP won it and resumed reporting from the courts later last year.
The judge said the boy’s case had “frightening circumstances”, adding “where such terrible physical injuries had happened to a child there was the potential for very serious psychological issues for him into the future”.
In a separate case, the mother of a teenage girl was “left to walk the streets looking for her” after she repeatedly left her unregulated placement. The girl was subjected to sexual assaults and rape by middle-aged men.
Dublin District Court heard the girl was in what is known as a special emergency arrangement (SEA) – a placement that falls outside statutory regulations, and had “repeatedly gone missing”.
The judge said the girl’s case “had spiralled out of control” and asked Tusla to explain “what standard of care was being provided to her as a vulnerable citizen”, says the report.
A social worker said it was considered “too early” to consider detaining the girl in special care, but given the escalation of danger a referral “should be progressed”.
The judge required Tusla to refer the girl for special care and “very reluctantly” extended an interim care order for 14 days.
Placement breakdowns, children absconding from SEAs, serious child neglect, parental drug addiction as a “major cause of care proceedings”, pressure on Tusla with shortages of social workers and social care workers, and a “growing number” of children with additional needs coming into care, remain issues before the courts, says the CLP.
“The reports include a number of cases where children who had suffered neglect or injury in their parents’ care are now thriving in foster care and overcoming early development delays.”
The cases of unaccompanied minors, ie children seeking asylum, feature. An interim care order was made in Dublin in the case of a girl, suspected of having been trafficked for the sex industry, who had been found “by a passerby ... on the street, extremely distressed and very unwell”.
In another case a District Court judge said Ireland did not “want to import the mores of a third-world country” when hearing the case of another unaccompanied minor.
Questioning what supports the child was getting to integrate into Ireland, he said it was important the child was told: “We have equality: you can be gay, you can be straight.”
