‘Life’s the same but we won’t have to take on the system’

That is how a lawyer described to the High Court the injuries suffered by Matthew McGrath when he was only 17 months old.

Matthew, now 12, and his parents Alan and Cathy won a long legal battle over his treatment at Wexford General Hospital where he was brought in suffering from an infection. It later turned out to be meningitis.

The boy is completely paralysed, confined to a wheelchair, cannot breathe without a ventilator, and can only eat by being fed through a tube.