The Director of Public Prosecutions has already indicated he will not oppose an application from Nora Wall for a certificate of miscarriage of justice in the Court of Criminal Appeal today.
This leaves the way clear for the court to issue such a certificate, and for Ms Wall to sue the State for damages arising out of her conviction in 1999 of rape of a young woman in her care.
Ms Wall is a former nun and was administrator of St Michael's Child Care Centre in Waterford when Regina Walsh was a resident there in the 1980s.
In 1999 she, along with a homeless, alcoholic, petty criminal, and sufferer from mental illness, Pablo McCabe, were convicted of rape of the girl over 10 years previously, when the girl was 10.
She was the first woman here to be convicted of rape, and was given the maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Pablo McCabe, who has since died, was sentenced to 12 years. In announcing the sentence Mr Justice Paul Carney referred to the incident involved as "a gang rape".
Following the sentencing, Ms Wall's defence counsel, Hugh Hartnett SC, immediately raised a number of questions about the trial and relevant facts that he said had not been disclosed by the prosecution. He sought leave to appeal, but this was refused, and he then sought leave in the Court of Criminal Appeal.
Following the sentence, he drew attention to interviews given by the victim and her friend to the Star newspaper, in which Ms Walsh claimed to have been raped by a man in Leicester Square, London.
He said it had also emerged that her friend, who corroborated her story of rape by Ms Wall, was alleged to have made a false allegation of sexual assault against another man. The matter was dealt with by the High Court, where the judge remarked he was "not impressed by their [the two girls'] evidence".
He also drew attention to the fact that Ms Walsh had spent time in a psychiatric unit in Waterford in 1996, and that this had not been disclosed during the trial.
In the meantime the DPP applied to have the convictions set aside, citing the fact that a witness was called whom the DPP had already directed should not be called. The Court of Criminal Appeal quashed the convictions in July 1999, and in November of that year the DPP issued an unprecedented statement on the matter, acknowledging that they were entitled to be presumed innocent of all charges.