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THE HIGH COURT discharged a care order in relation to Samantha Azzopardi this morning and the Australian woman will now be moved into the HSE’s adult mental health care services.
The case came before the courts again this morning after the Australian citizen was positively identified by Gardaí earlier this week.
Before the case was heard this morning, Gerard O’Brien, who is a representative of Azzopardi’s guardian ad litem, Orla Ryan, said that Ryan “remains very concerned about this young lady” and that Azzopardi was “very isolated” although she did have some contact with people here.
In court, Senior Counsel Tim O’Leary, acting for the HSE, said that a report found that Azzopardi was not suffering from a disorder under the Mental Health Act 2001, but she does have a “condition that makes her vulnerable”.
Due to this, she is not suitable for detention under the Mental Health Act 2001.
She will be looked after by the adult psychiatric services of the HSE and supports will be available to her in the community and potentially through the gardaí.
Justice George Bermingham noted that when the case first came before the court, “everybody believed we were dealing with a minor” and worked on the assumption that she was a victim of trafficking.
He told the court that though the circumstances had changed, “this doesn’t mean that the proceedings weren’t worthwhile”.
In discharging the interim orders today, Judge Birmingham said that what emerged after Azzopardi was identified “came as a shock to everyone”.
Judge Bermingham was told in court that the guardian ad litem believes that Azzopardi should be dealt with by adult services in the HSE.
Although she remains at a HSE facility, she is taking up an acute bed so it is understood she will be moved to community care shortly.
Samantha Azzopardi, who is in her 20s, has been in the care of the HSE since she was found on 10 October and was unable to tell Gardaí or healthcare workers who she was or where she had come from.
A High Court judge yesterday discharged the order to detain Azzopardi under the Childcare Act, but delayed its implementation until today to allow for alternative arrangements to be made for her care.
The court heard yesterday that she was still in a vulnerable state and removing the order could “put her life at risk”.
Additional reporting by Sinéad O’Carroll and Aoife Barry
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Meanwhile life goes on at Fukushima.
Only a matter of time when we will rue the day of nuclear power
I think the people of Pripyat already do.
Someday they will learn to handle it properly and safely…
“Someday they will learn to handle it properly and safely” — but what will the consequences be,
when they learn that?
It’s no trick being safer than coal. But what if it becomes safer than natural gas to provide the same power? Safer than natural-gas-plus-wind-turbines? It’s already less radioactively polluting than those systems.
When that superior safety shall be fact, a government that wants to take a billion dollars in natural gas severance taxes and/or royalties and/or import duties will have to accept the loss of some citizens to gas disasters in the bargain. If it allows nuclear energy to be used instead, those lives will be saved, but the billion will, from a civil service point of view, be lost: it will remain in private hands.
No-one will forthrightly deplore that result. Everyone’s official position will be that however good a few million dollars in tax revenue may be, it doesn’t justify an innocent citizen’s death.
But perhaps there will come to be a huge industry of denying that nuclear energy is a lifesaver, and of calling nuclear wrecks that harm no-one “nuclear disasters”.
Perhaps, eh?
Perhaps when the media makes accuracy the priority over profits.. but the scary word “nuclear” sells very well. The headline “Radiation from Fukushima has not caused any health effect” may be true, but it won’t catch peoples attention or sell advertising. They definitely don’t want people to know that fear of Fukushima radiation caused much more harm than the radiation itself, then they might be held accountable…….
Not a single person was killed when the water hit the Fukushima nuclear plant, in fact I have not heard of anyone even cutting their finger there. In comparison around 18,000 people from the surrounding area were swept away never to be seen again. But here on the Journal Fukushima is remembered as a a nuclear disaster. In the press hysteria trumps fact every time.
The tsunami left the enormous death toll,19000, not the incident at the nuclear power plant. The wording of this item is rubbish.
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