A Co Dublin nurse will today seek leave of the High Court to challenge an injunction restraining her from practising as a home birth midwife. Yesterday up to 100 mothers with their children and other supporters of the nurse publicly demonstrated outside the Four Courts.
Her application for leave for judicial review was to have been heard yesterday but was adjourned by Mr Justice Smyth until today because of a particularly heavy list of applications for bail.
The injunction was granted on August 1st on the application of An Bord Altranais against Ms Ann O Ceallaigh, a self-employed domiciliary midwife, of Temple Crescent, Blackrock.
The August 1st hearing, before the President of the High Court, Mr Justice Costello, was heard in camera.
Ms O Ceallaigh wants all future court hearings to be conducted in public.
She will today apply for the restriction on publicity to be lifted on the grounds that it is unconstitutional and breaches the European Convention on Human Rights.
She claims the case against her by the board is based on allegations of two nursing and medical executives in the Rotunda and Holles Street maternity hospitals in Dublin.
She has been restrained from practising as a nurse pending the outcome of a disciplinary inquiry by the board into those allegations and now seeks to quash the injunction and the case against her on eight grounds.