Order of Mandamus brought on behalf of applicant suffering from profound and severe mental and physical disabilities against the Minister for Health, the Minister for Education, and the Attorney General to compel the provision of free primary education.
The State was very slow to respond in any meaningful way to the High Court order, for which it was heavily criticised in later judgments. Ultimately, however, the applicant was provided with the requisite facilities, albeit still in a grudging fashion. In the broader scheme of things, this judgment, and its progeny, played a part in bringing about the enactment of the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act 2004 and the Disability Act 2005, both of which purport to address the educational needs of children with disabilities. Both Acts have, however, been consistently criticized by disability rights activists.
For the first time the constitutional right to education was explicitly interpreted as covering educational needs of children with severe disabilities. This case, then, became the basis for a series of challenges in the late 1990s and early 2000s dealing with the State’s failure to make adequate provision for children with special educational needs. The scope and potential of the O’Donoghue judgment has, however, been somewhat tempered by more recent Supreme Court judgments (such as Sinnott v. Minister for Education, [2001]IESC 63(12 July, 2001, available at: http://www.bailii.org/ie/cases/IESC/2001/63.html).