A six-year-old autistic boy has been awarded almost €61,000 damages by the High Court against the Health Service Executive because of "unreasonable" delay in diagnosing his condition and in providing appropriate therapies to him.
Mr Justice Michael Peart said the delay was due to lack of adequate resources to meet the "enormous" increase in demands for such services and he accepted that the service providers had done their "very best" to cope.
However, if Seán Ó Cuanacháin's autism had been diagnosed earlier, and a package of measures to which he was entitled put in place sooner, his challenging behaviour might never have reached the level it had, the judge said. Seán would probably, for example, have been more advanced in the area of communication than he was when he began pre-school in February 2004.
Mr Justice Peart ruled that because a period of some 12 months was lost to Seán due to the delay, the HSE had breached its duty of care to the boy. In light of evidence that Seán had nonetheless made very good progress, the judge assessed the amount of damages as €60,686.
The damages had to be confined to the impact on Seán, irrespective of how "appallingly difficult" life was for his parents and sister during that period, he added. The judge rejected claims that the Department of Education had breached its duty to Seán in relation to provision of education services for him following diagnosis.
He was not satisfied that any failure by the department specifically led to adverse consequences for Seán, given the "great efforts" of his parents to otherwise provide pre-schooling for him.
The judge adjourned to next week issues relating to who will pay the substantial legal costs, estimated at some €5 million, of the 68-day legal action brought by Seán's parents - Cian and Yvonne Ó Cuanacháin, Woodbine Avenue, Mountain View, Arklow, Co Wicklow - aimed at securing State funding into the future for a specific form of education for him.
In the action, regarded as a test case for autistic children seeking education according to the system of Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA), Seán's parents sought orders compelling the State to provide funding for education according to ABA.
However, they lost that central part of the action last March when Mr Justice Peart found that the programme of education being provided by the State for Seán - an eclectic and Model A programme - was "appropriate autism-specific educational provision".
He adjourned the delivery of his full judgment on the ABA issue and his decision on whether there was failure to meet Seán's education and therapy needs over a two-year period.
He delivered his 270-page judgment yesterday and will deal next week with the costs issue.
Paul Sreenan SC, for Seán, said he would be seeking costs against the HSE and was reserving his position on whether to seek costs against the State. Feichín McDonagh SC, for the Minister for Education, said the State would not be seeking its legal costs against Seán.
Felix McEnroy SC, for the HSE, said his client was only involved in a small aspect of the case but would be making submissions about the length of the case.
In his decision on damages, the judge found there was a culpable and unreasonable seven-month delay by the HSE before diagnosing Seán's autism in November 2002 and a further delay in his being provided with appropriate services.
In the context of the need for early intervention, valuable time was wasted as the parents could not seek support services without a confirmed diagnosis of autism, he found.
The judge stressed that, in fairness to the Lucena Clinic, which diagnosed Seán's autism in November 2002, and to Beechpark Services, providers of autism services, the delays were due to a lack of resources to cope with the enormous increase in demand for their services.
Earlier, the judge said he had concluded, on the balance of probabilities and following evidence from a range of experts, that the Model A framework for autism-specific primary education constituted appropriate educational provision for Seán.
