Adrian B,
1) The view that the flight should not have departed or turned around earlier is a rather simplistic one. Weather forecasting is not completely accurate, and the weather at destination is frequently different to that forecast. The cloud only has to change by 100ft or visibility by a few hundred metres to have a completely different outcome. If they believed the weather was going to be above the captains minima, or forecast to be above, then they have every right to depart, and manage the situation safely. If the cloud was forecast to be at 300ft, for example, then there is a difficult operational decision to make. Do you sit on the ground and delay passengers and an aircraft even though the weather is ABOVE your minima, but has the possiblity of going below? Or do you depart, and do the "pilot thing" and manage the situation as it unfolds? 95% of the time you will land successfully, and thats something that the Captain in consultation with their control department will discuss. Same goes if the aircraft is restricted to higher minima because of an unserviceablity.
2) I'm sure that the captain would have been more than comfortable flying a low visibility approach in the aircraft. However, there is a good chance that having just qualified on the aircraft he hadn't completed all of the company's low visibility requirements (which often include a certain number of sectors in the aircraft, a certain number of approaches etc). Its nothing about ability, its all about legality.
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