The High Court ruled that a birth record must be amended to show a mother’s true name, even though she mistakenly believed a different name was hers when her daughter’s birth was registered. The judgment was delivered by Kearns P. on 7 June 2013 in a judicial review challenge to the Registrar General’s refusal to change the entry.
The daughter was born in Limerick in 2000. Her birth certificate named her mother as Sorina Cirpaci. The mother, Maria Caldaras, said she had been given a relative’s birth certificate in Romania and believed that name was hers until she later found her correct birth record and obtained a Romanian passport in her own name. The Registrar General accepted that Caldaras was the child’s mother but refused to amend the record, reasoning that it correctly reflected the name she used at the time of registration.
Caldaras applied to have the entry changed in January 2007 and provided documents, including DNA evidence, by October that year. After several years of correspondence, the Registrar General issued the refusal in July 2012. The applicants sought judicial review, arguing that the entry contained an error of fact and that the refusal affected their rights. The respondent argued that the register recorded the historical facts at the time of birth and raised concerns about fraud and the integrity of the register.
The daughter obtained an Irish passport in November 2012, after the judicial review proceedings had begun. The court rejected the respondent’s argument that this made the case moot. It held that both mother and child had a legitimate interest in having the parent’s identity correctly recorded, including for matters such as ancestry and inheritance.
Kearns P. distinguished the case from earlier decisions concerning later changes in gender identity. Here, the court said, the applicants were not seeking to record a later change in circumstances: the mother’s true name was Maria Caldaras at all relevant times. Her mistaken belief at the time of registration did not make the other name a historical fact. The court also rejected the view that an error could be corrected only if the Registrar General or staff had made a mistake.
The judge acknowledged the importance of protecting the register from fraud and said applicants must take care to provide accurate information. But he found the Registrar General had misinterpreted the legal test and that the roughly five-year delay in deciding the application had not been coherently explained. The judgment concluded that the applicant was entitled to the relief sought and to have the register amended accordingly.