INJUNCTION:DURING THE child abuse and neglect case in Roscommon Circuit Court, a social worker referred to a "Catholic right-wing organisation" having supported a High Court injunction in 2000 to prevent the children being taken into care.
A childcare manager separately told the court he was contacted by a woman called Mina Bean Uí Chroibín about the time of the application and she said that the family needed support rather than intrusive action by the health board. He said he had no evidence that she was involved in the application but he suspected it.
The application was made in 2000, three years after the “C” case, in which a girl in health board care travelled to Britain for an abortion, following evidence that she was suicidal. The case aroused considerable controversy, with demonstrations by Youth Defence against the health board.
Youth Defence also provided the girl’s father with a legal team to challenge the decision.
This was a time when there was a lot of suspicion about the actions of health boards regarding families on the part of groups such as Youth Defence (later the Mother and Child campaign, later again Cóir, which has been active in the anti-Lisbon campaign).
Nothing was said in court this week to link any of these groups to the woman at the centre of the case. The only name mentioned in court was that of Bean Uí Chroibín, who is not a member of any of the well-known anti-abortion groups, though she is known to some of their members and former members who spoke to The Irish Timesyesterday.
She was described as a woman who had helped people in her community in north Dublin, including people faced with court proceedings aimed at taking their children into care. She and her family have run a post office in north Dublin for a number of decades.
Now an elderly woman, she had a long association with campaigns against contraception in the 1960s and 1970s, and later against divorce and abortion.
She was also a campaigner for the Irish language, and set up her own Gaelscoil, Scoil Paipín Naofa, in Santry in the early 1990s. It used a pre-Vatican II catechism, and celebrated Mass according to the Tridentine Rite. After objections from some of the parents and withdrawal of some children from the school, it closed down.
Bean Uí Chroibín was not available yesterday to comment on whether she had intervened in attempts by the Western Health Board to have the children at the centre of the Roscommon case taken into care. Though an elderly woman could be seen through net curtains in the flat-roof house adjoining the post office, there was no answer to calls.
In the post office entrance area was an “Unsung Hero” certificate awarded to Bean Uí Chroibín in 2006 by then lord mayor of Dublin Catherine Byrne. It was given, it said, for: “Having demonstrated dedication as an active citizen through your participation and effort . . . Thank you on behalf of all the people of Dublin.”