PILA Bulletin readers may recall that the introduction of the Court and Civil Law Act 2013, which came into force earlier this year, relaxed the in-camera rule in relation to family law cases. This has allowed for limited reporting of cases before the family law courts.
Click here to read a previous PILA Bulletin article regarding the Court and Civil Law Act 2013.
A number of cases were heard in the High Court last week, regarding the legal requirement of the Adoption Authority of Ireland to notify the biological father before a child is adopted. This requirement was dispensed with by the High Court’s Mr Justice Henry Abbott in four recent cases.
The cases were brought before the High Court by the Authority itself. In all four cases the current partners of the mothers were seeking to adopt the child involved. As part of the procedure, the mothers were also required to adopt their own biological children.
In all cases, the mothers said that the children were conceived through one-off encounters where the women did not know the men involved. They said they had met the men in either bars or nightclubs in Ireland, and in one occasion abroad. The women said they had been under the influence of alcohol at the time and either only knew the first name of the man involved, could not recall his name or had not been told his name.
Social worker reports were produced in each case and the court was told the mothers were “honest and truthful.” Counsel for the Adoption Authority also said that the mothers and their current partners had been assessed for adoption and had been found eligible.
Mr Justice Abbott said there was an onus on the court to get the Authority to do the utmost it could to track down the men involved but the area was “very fraught.” He also said that if too much energy was put into searching for the men, the court could run into data protection trouble. He was satisfied in all four cases that all necessary steps had been taken to try and establish the fathers’ identities.
Click here to read the Irish Times article about the High Court ruling.