A ONE-year-old infant has been placed in emergency foster care after he was found in a buggy, partly dressed, outside a Limerick city takeaway with his heavily intoxicated mother.
Details of the incident which unfolded at around 2am in the early hours of last Monday. were heard at a special sitting of Limerick Court.
Gardaí said they arrived at the Chicken Hut on O’Connell Street, where the mother was found with her young baby in a buggy.
Dressed in just a vest, the little boy was trying to get out of the buggy and had a little blanket at his side.
The child’s mother was heavily intoxicated and distressed as she claimed she had been assaulted while drinking at a friend’s apartment.
With raised fears over the child’s safety, Gardai enacted section 12 of the Child care Act and took the little boy in to custody. They brought the child directly to University Hospital Limerick where he was put into the care of medical staff.
Subsequently, an application under the Child Care Act was made at Limerick Court by Muiris Gavin solicitor acting for Tusla, the Child and Family Welfare Agency, to have the little boy placed in emergency foster care for 28 days.
Objecting to the application, defence counsel for the young mother, Erin O’Hagan BL, said she denied she was heavily intoxicated and that she had four bottles of Budweiser before an incident occurred at the apartment.
Ms O’Hagan said that something happened to the company she was with and they just turned on her. She said there was an assault and she fled the apartment. The child had been dressed in warmer baby grows but they were taken off as the apartment was warm.
She told Judge Mary Larkin that “the child presented very well and was meeting all his milestones at every appointment and when unannounced visits were made to the home, he always presented well and no alcohol was ever found in the apartment.”
However, Mr Gavin said that the drinking habits of the mother had been of concern to Tusla and that she needed to address these before the matter could be resolved.
Judge Larkin granted the 28-day emergency foster care order and adjourned the case until January 18.
