"A young boy with cerebral palsy has secured a €15 million settlement and apology from a Dublin maternity hospital that he sued, claiming negligence in the circumstances of his birth.
The settlement is among the highest reached in such cases.
The President of the High Court, Mr Justice Peter Kelly, on Tuesday agreed with Eoin McCallig's father Anthony that there must be a "better way" of dealing with cases involving catastrophically injured children than via litigation extending over years to a “bitter end" and last-minute settlement offers.
The settlement for Eoin McCallig was approved on Tuesday, just three days before the child's fifth birthday.
The judge said it was a "fair and just" settlement and praised the child's parents, Jean and Anthony, for their dedication to, and love for, him.
A €13.5 million offer was made last week by the Coombe hospital but the judge agreed with the family's lawyers that it was not adequate to meet the child's lifetime care needs and declined to approve it.
The case seemed to involve "error upon error", including failure to act on instructions to move Eoin's mother to a delivery room earlier and to ensure continuous monitoring of the foetal heartbeat, the judge said.
While it appeared negligence was admitted, the dispute, had the case gone to hearing, would have been whether the negligence caused the child's injuries and the plaintiff had a strong case in that regard, he added.
Denis McCullough SC, for Eoin, said they were confident they would have succeeded in showing the injuries were suffered in the 20 minutes before Eoin's delivery and, had he been delivered earlier, those would not have been suffered.
