Unborn baby gets barrister for court battle

A young senior counsel, Conor Dignam, has been given the most important legal assignment of his career — representing the baby whose heart continues to beat in the brain-dead body of its mother in a country hospital.

High Court president Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns, was told that Mr Dignam, with barrister Siobhan Phelan and solicitor Patricia Drumgoole, had been appointed by the HSE to represent the interests of the unborn in today’s life-or-death High Court struggle regarding the future of the baby and its mother.

Mr Justice Kearns said he would sit today with Ms Justice Marie Baker and Ms Justice Caroline Cosetello as a divisional court of the High Court to determine the issues concerning the mother, currently on a life-support machine, and her baby of 17 weeks’ gestation.