Court dispenses with need for parental permission to immunise child in care

An order dispensing with the need for parental permission for the immunisation of a child in the care of the State has been granted at the Dublin District Family Court.

Judge Sinéad Ní Chulacháin granted the order for a young girl after hearing the child's parents were not engaging with the Child and Family Agency.

The agency told the court yesterday it was making an application under section 47 of the Childcare Act 1991 to allow a girl to be given routine immunisations, including for measles, mumps and rubella.

The social worker in the case said the parents had been made aware of the need for immunisations. She had written to them and had tried to contact them on the phone, including through text messaging. She had invited them to two meetings this month, but they did not attend.

In the past, when they were engaging with the social work department, they had never expressed any unhappiness with their children’s immunisations, she said.

Contact details

After being assured the parents’ contact details had not changed, Judge Ní Chulacháin said she would dispense with the need for the parents’ consent.

“It is in the child’s best interests that she has the immunisations,” she said.

She also extended the interim care order for the child and her sibling to the end of next month.

Separately, a young woman told Judge Gerard Furlong her former partner kicked her on the arms because she would not give him their baby. She said she was walking down the street with the baby last week when he assaulted her.

“I’ll show you the bruises,” she said, rolling up the sleeve of her jumper to reveal marks on her arm. The judge suggested she take a photo of them so she could use them in evidence for the next court date.

The woman, who had made an ex-parte application for protection in the absence of her former partner, also said he had phoned members of her family and threatened to snap her neck. He also threatened to smash the windows of her house and take the baby.

“I had 20 missed calls off him while I was waiting outside [the court],” she said.

Judge Furlong granted a protection order, which means the man can be arrested immediately if he uses or threatens to use violence or besets the woman’s home. He set a date in October for hearing the case with both sides present.

In another case, a woman told the judge she went out to a local shop last week leaving her 10-year-old daughter at home with her adult sister. She said her estranged husband pulled up outside the house to collect the girl to take her to the park, but she had gone to play in the home of a friend who lived nearby.

When the 10-year-old saw her father, she left her friend’s house to go to him, but he “went crazy”. She ran into her own home frightened and he ran after her, the mother said.

“He flipped and ran screaming into the kitchen,” she said. She described him as “a big, muscly man” and said he hit the child repeatedly and there were marks on her back.

“I came home just in time to get him off her,” she said.

The mother said although he had hit her before, he had never before been violent with their daughter. She said the girl was traumatised and no longer wanted to see her father. “She is terrified of him.”

Judge Furlong granted the protection order and set the case hearing for October.