A mother of seven has been awarded €90,000 in damages after a sterilisation operation failed and she gave birth to two children.
However, Mr Justice Peter Kelly refused to award the woman and her now estranged husband damages for the cost of rearing the two children to adulthood.
In what was the first claim of its kind, the couple had said they should receive the same costs as would have been incurred if the two children were raised in foster care. They were seeking just over €381,000 in damages for that aspect of the case.
But the judge said that the benefits of having a healthy child outweighed any loss incurred in rearing them.
And he said that if he did award damages in such a case it would open the door to a limitless range of claims in respect of every aspect of family life.
Bridget Byrne, who is now 45, gave birth to her first child when she was 17.
She had a sterilisation operation at the Coombe hospital in December 1999. However in 2000 and 2001, she gave birth to two more healthy children.
Mr Justice Kelly found that the consultant who carried out the operation, Dr Charles Murray, was negligent and breached the duty of care owed to Mrs Byrne because he failed to put a clip on one of her fallopian tubes.
He also found the hospital was negligent because it did not clearly inform Mrs Byrne that the sterilisation operation had failed.
And he ruled that the hospital was also liable for damages because Mrs Byrne was a public patient who had not chosen any particular surgeon for her operation, and Dr Murray was employed by the Coombe.
But Mr Justice Kelly refused the Byrnes' claim for damages for the cost of rearing the two children so far and the cost of rearing them to adulthood.
The judge noted that Mrs Byrne and her now estranged husband, Daniel, had stressed throughout the case that the two children were loved, cherished and supported by the family and the Byrnes did not see their children in terms of profit and loss.
He quoted extensively from judgments by the House of Lords in England in similar cases, and he came to the conclusion that it would not be fair or reasonable to impose the costs of rearing a healthy child on the doctor who was negligent.
Mrs Byrne did not comment afterwards.
