The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by an anonymised family seeking birth certificates in assumed names rather than the names recorded in the State’s register of births.
In a judgment delivered on 7 November 2025, Mr Justice Maurice Collins agreed with the Chief Justice that the appeal should be dismissed.
The appellants — Robert Doe, Jane Doe and four minor children identified by pseudonyms — argued that the State should issue official documents using names different from those accurately recorded in the register.
Collins J said the case was fundamentally different from previous proceedings in which courts had required inaccurate official records to be corrected. Here, there was no error in the register. The family instead wished, for what the judge described as understandable reasons, to conceal their true identity.
The judge held that the constitutional right to identity could not support that claim. He said that right protects a person’s authentic name and civil-registration details being accurately recorded and recognised by the State.
The court also emphasised the strong public interest in maintaining an accurate register of births. Collins J said birth registration records historical fact and functions as a document of current identity.
He considered whether the State might nevertheless be required to issue alternative documents if refusing to do so placed the family in danger. However, he found that the evidence fell well short of showing that the absence of birth certificates or other official documents in the assumed names exposed the appellants to danger or increased an existing risk.
The judgment also addressed the broader constitutional concept of human dignity. Collins J concluded that dignity is a fundamental constitutional value informing rights such as equality, privacy and autonomy, rather than a standalone constitutional right in itself.
That question was not decisive to the outcome. The appeal failed because the claimed right to identity did not extend to requiring the State to issue birth certificates containing names different from the accurate register entries.