A woman who claims she was unlawfully detained for 20 years at an industrial school where she was sent at the age of two after coming before the Dublin courts for begging cannot sue the State and others for damages, the High Court has ruled.
In 1946, when she was two years and seven months old, Dolores Faulkner, from Longford town, was brought before the courts in Dublin for begging. She was sent to St Joseph's industrial school in Clifden, Co Galway, and was there from 1946 to 1965.
Arising from her alleged unlawful detention at the school, where she claimed she was emotionally and physically abused, Ms Faulkner initiated an action for damages against the ministers for health, education and justice, Ireland, the Attorney General, the Mercy Order and Archbishop Michael Neary as representative of the Archdiocese of Tuam.
The High Court yesterday granted an application by the defendants for an order halting Ms Faulkner's claim. They had claimed they had been prejudiced by the delay in bringing the action and that it would be contrary to the interests of justice to allow the action to proceed.
Mr Justice Paul Gilligan noted Ms Faulkner had initiated proceedings in 1999 and was ready to proceed 61 years after the start of the alleged wrongful acts and 42 years from the date when they stopped.
Mr Justice Gilligan said it was clear that there was now no witness available to give evidence on the defendants' behalf because they were all either dead or so aged and infirm as not be in a position to give meaningful evidence.
For a court to be asked to determine issues which arose between 1946 and 1964 in the absence of any of the people involved on the defendants' behalf would, in his view, result in a basic unfairness of procedures and give rise to a real risk of an unfair trial.
In those circumstances, there was a clear and patent unfairness in asking the defendants to defend the action. The prejudice suffered by the defendants was substantial. On those grounds, he dismissed the claim.
Ms Faulkner claimed that a court had ordered that she was to be detained at St Joseph's until she turned 16 in 1960, but that she was kept unconstitutionally at that school until she was 21. She was then sent to a nursing school in England by the Mercy nuns, she claimed.