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AN IRISH-BORN CHILD whose mother fought his deportation order for most of his life because of his severe form of sickle cell has died.
The nine-year-old boy was taken to hospital on Sunday night but died the following day.
His Nigerian mother still faces deportation.
The pair fought the initial orders, made in 2011, in the High Court but were not granted leave to seek a judicial review of the Minister’s decision to deport. The Supreme Court dismissed their subsequent appeal of that decision in March.
However, a fresh application on health and humanitarian grounds has since been made to the Minister for Justice.
Brian Burns, the solicitor acting for the mother and son, told TheJournal.ie that the mother is still at risk of deportation but is just “absolutely devastated” by her son’s death.
“He was a very sick little boy,” he explained.
He had a very severe form of sickle cell. He’d had numerous treatments and blood transfusions in hospital. He had a life full of pain and suffering.
The boy’s funeral Mass and burial were held today, where a large group of family and friends gathered with their pastor to pay their respects.
Sickle cell disease is an inherited red blood cell disorder. It can cause fatigue and pain, as well as damage to the internal organs.
Court cases
During the court proceedings in March, an affidavit from the mother was read out which stated that she had been so desperate in order to fund his treatment that she had resorted to prostitution.
“What would happen to (my son) if we were to be deported?” it read.
In order to pay for my son’s medication I became involved in prostitution.
A 2014 letter written by consultant haematologist at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin, Dr Corrina McMahon, was also read out. It said that the young boy “is at risk from the most extreme condition of sickle cell disease”.
“I would say that if (the boy) is deported to Nigeria it is very unlikely that he would survive.”
From that year, the State began to fund his healthcare.
In his March judgement, Chief Justice Frank Clarke said that due to a decision in a separate case by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), another application which focused on the medical evidence could now be presented to the Minister for Justice.
“It is worth noting that the Minister retains an important discretion under the relevant legislation to grant leave to remain on general humanitarian grounds,” he said.
He noted that the fresh application to revoke the deportation orders would include issues identified in that ECtHR case – including the circumstances that the boy has spent all of his life in Ireland and “has at least a significant medical reason for not being returned”.
“…the Minister might well wish to consider whether it would be appropriate, in the exercise of his general discretion, to grant humanitarian leave to remain without having to engage in the kind of assessment which is mandated by Paposhvili. However, that decision is one entirely for the Minister and is not one which the courts can either make or require the Minister to make,” he concluded.
Burns said that fresh application has recently been made to the Department of Justice.
Whether the mother will be allowed to stay in Ireland now “completely depends on humanitarian considerations”, he added.
Comments are closed as legal proceedings are ongoing.
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I have only used windows 8 on friends laptops, I found it disastrous though. A nightmare to navigate and get around. Quite happy with windows 7 and I won’t be in a rush to change
Still with 7 myself, I see it’s included in the update.
Might just wait and see though, hopefully they’ve nailed it this time.
I upgraded to 8.1 as it’s part of the minimum requirements for Kinect for windows V2 only to discover that it’s heavy on USB3 bandwidth and the hardware isn’t up to it.
I have to say though, having used a windows tablet before I really don’t see what people are complaining about with Win 8.1 – I’ve come to the conclusion that people don’t like change and that’s the issue more than anything.
“Linux is for people who want to know why it works. Mac is for people who don’t want to know why it works. DOS is for people who want to know why it does not work. Windows is for people who don’t want to know why it does not work.”
If you like Windows 7 then you’ll love Windows 10. It’s like a fork in the tree, bringing the familiarity of Windows 7 to the performance and features of Windows 8.1, plus more. The UI stuff appears to have been sorted out, with desktops/laptops acting like updated Windows 7 desktops/laptops, and mobile devices focusing more on the “Modern” UI. Hybrid devices can adapt using a feature called Continuum. And best feature: it’s one Windows 10 across phone, tablet, laptop/desktop, and the TV (via Xbox One) with one common store, enabling devs to write for all devices at once using “Universal Apps”. That should prod The Journal to finally give us a native app ;-)
Nah Tony, that’s arse. OSX is also for people who know how the sausage is made but don’t want to make it every time. All the BSD you can eat and mainstream platform support.
Microsoft aren’t really losing revenue that can be expected in this age of platform agnosticism. You can’t even win in the OS market by giving superior product away.
If you can`t getr your head around the new look Windows 8/8.1 – look into a program called “Classic Shell” (free) – it will let you organise windows 8/8.1 into looking like windows 7 , easy to use and configure.
Start8 by Stardock. It’s totally seamless and has everything you need for a native feeling Windows 7 experience. I keep forgetting other Win8 machines don’t have it! The only remnant of Metro is the wifi sidebar. It costs a few quid but it’s perfect and made by a great little company.
Classic shell is great. Surprised few people know about it. So much unnecessary hate towards 8.1
Classic shell is free, where as Start8 is only free for 30days and $9.99 thereafter.
Thats what i did as i was so used to using windows 7 but my laptop packed up so cheaper buying new one but missed the interface of 7!!!
What’s gass about media coverage of tech industry is that they only focus on consumer products. Decline in sales of PC’s doesn’t affect their sales of their Server products and other enterprise software, which back in 2013 brought them in over $20billion in revenue (Windows Server, SQL Server, Exchange, Visual Studio/dev tools)
Windows 8 is a complete balls, the only good thing about it was its fast to load, but it’s a nightmare to use, If they kept the start button and give the option to switch over it wouldn’t be so bad. Windows 7 was grand
They gave the start button back in one of the updates. As for the metro interface if you spend 30 secs putting your programs in and learn the keyboard shortcut that have been a part of windows since at least 95. You find navigation much faster than 7. Also the search function on Windows 8 please you can just type what you what and get it. It people were willing to change a bit they would live how fast windows 8 makes everything.
For the record I hated 8 when I got it but after I used it for a month it and got used to it. I started to like it and then I when back to Windows 7 and found how slow things impossible to deal with.
Using windows 8.1 and it’s fine wouldn’t go back to windows 7 tbh, it’s a very Lean OS and flies along when installed on an ssd. Also I picked up the Microsoft Lumia 535 in Argos for €115 and have to say it’s an nice phone 5″ screen quad core no slowdown main apps are there like Facebook Twitter etc, no journal app but someone put up an unofficial app and it works fine. I did have a Moto G but it failed on calls the person who I was talking to voice would become garbled if the signal dropped a bar.
Windows 10 Technical Preview is worth a shot. Stepping back to go forwards. Start menu is enhanced by taking some design tips from Windows ’98 and the charms seem to be sleeping with the fishes.
Still, if you want to save money on system maintenance and have a better user Apple is still the only way to go.
Interesting comment from MS recently where they described Windows 10 as a service. Some eagle eyed commentators picked up on that. A service could mean a subscription based service similar to the model that Adobe have moved to. I’m on Win 7 and even though the upgrade to 10 is free for a year, I won’t move until I know its definitely non subscription based.
Do yourself a favour and dual boot it with Ubuntu. Trust me, you’ll hardly ever use Windows again.
Yep…Linux Mint being the best flavour of the day for newbies. I’ve put at least 15 people on it last year in dual boot and none of them have used Windows since. They all remark that their mental health has improved.
One less year of private education for the kids after that dip in share price today..
I thought I’d want to stay on 7 until they “fixed” things after the windows 8 fiasco but having in tried it I now really like it. I have it on the surface pro 3 also and I think it’s very good on that form factor.
I have 10 running on a laptop at present and have tried it on the surface. It’s excellent. 7 looks and feels antiquated at this stage.
I don’t see the need to buy into this idea of updating the software every year. It’s only a moneyspinner. I have used Windows 95 on my home PC and it is still going strong.
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