Desmond Doyle

After placing the children in what he believed to be a temporary situation, Doyle left for work in England. While there, he met Jessie Powers née Cunningham, who was his landlady and who later accompanied him back to Ireland .

Upon his return to his homeland in the autumn of 1954, Doyle petitioned for the return of his children. Nevertheless, the government denied his request, citing the best interests of the children. He subsequently fought a legal battle to regain custody of them, which required overturning the provisions of the Irish Children Act, 1941. This law prevented a father from caring for his own children in the absence of their mother if she was living unless she gave written permission for him to do so. Doyle became involved in a case presented before the Irish Supreme Court in which it was claimed that the Children's Act contravened several sections of the Irish Constitution. In December 1955, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Desmond Doyle, and ordered that the children be returned to him and that his court costs were to be reimbursed by the government.

The events leading up to the Supreme Court's decision were recounted in the book Evelyn: A True Story. The story was also published as Tea and Green Ribbons: A Memoir (2003, Free Press, New York). Her sequel describing the Doyles' life and Evelyn's life after the Supreme Court decision was published as Nothing Green: The Sequel to the Bestselling "Evelyn" (2004, Orion Publishing Group, London).[1]

A highly fictionalised account of these events has been recorded in the film Evelyn (2002), starring Pierce Brosnan (who plays Desmond), Julianna Margulies, Sophie Vavasseur, Stephen Rea, Aidan Quinn and Alan Bates and directed by Bruce Beresford. The film only showed three children, Evelyn and two brothers (Maurice and Dermot), instead of all six of the real-life family's children, and involved no period in England or Jessie Powers.

• Irish Children Act, 1941
• Abuse survivors attack Brosnan film