The High Court has ruled that a Thai adoption of two children is not recognisable in Ireland and therefore does not prevent the Adoption Authority of Ireland from making a domestic adoption order in their case.
The judgment, delivered by Ms Justice Bronagh O’Hanlon on 25 November 2016, answered legal questions referred by the Authority under section 49(2) of the Adoption Act 2010. The case came before the court on 17 October 2016. The court did not itself make an adoption order.
The children, identified as J.B. and K.B., are siblings born in Thailand in 2006 and 2008. Their aunt, P.B., applied to adopt them in Thailand in 2011. The adoption was registered there in February 2012, after approval by a provincial child committee. The judgment records that the Thai process was treated as a domestic adoption and did not involve Thailand’s central or competent authority for inter-country adoption or meet the Hague Convention requirements.
The children came to Ireland with P.B. and C.B. in April 2012 and have since lived in their care in Malahide, County Dublin. The couple began a domestic adoption application in May 2013. The Authority declared them eligible and suitable in March 2015. No application had been made to have the Thai adoption entered on Ireland’s Register of Inter-country Adoptions, and the Authority had not determined whether it should be recognised.
The Authority argued that the existing Thai adoption and the Convention’s safeguards left it without jurisdiction to make a domestic order. The applicants said the Thai adoption was not an “adoption order” under Irish law and could not amount to a bar on their application. The Attorney General also submitted that the children were eligible for domestic adoption.
The court held that the Thai adoption was not recognisable in Ireland under Part 8 of the 2010 Act or at common law. Because it was not recognised, the court found it could not preclude the Authority from making an adoption order. It concluded that the children were eligible under section 23 and that the Authority had jurisdiction to make an order without a further direction from the High Court.
The court did not decide whether the earlier case of M.F. v. An Bord Uchtála remained good law, saying that determination was unnecessary. It answered the referred questions: no to recognition of the Thai adoption; yes to the Authority’s jurisdiction; no determination required on M.F.; the children’s original status remained; and yes, they were eligible for adoption under section 23. The judgment determined those legal questions only; it did not grant an adoption order.