Inquest laws are obsolete, says coroner

LAWS relating to inquests are outmoded and inadequate, the Dublin City Coroner said after a jury returned an unlawful killing verdict in the case of two elderly women murdered in their sheltered homes.

At the end of one of the longest running and most controversial inquests ever heard in the State, coroner Brian Farrell delivered his own damning verdict on a structure that he claims does not serve modern society.

Mr Farrell was particularly frustrated by his lack of power to force a witness to give what could have been vital evidence in the inquest into the deaths of Sylvia Shields, 57, and Mary Callinan, 61, the two woman brutally attacked and murdered in 1997 in their home in the grounds of a hospital in north inner city Dublin.