The High Court has ordered the registration in Ireland of two adoptions made in Russia in 2011, finding that the cases fell within a “discrete and limited” category of truly exceptional circumstances.
Mr Justice Jordan made the orders under section 92 of the Adoption Act 2010 in two related proceedings concerning brothers identified as M. and S. The ex tempore judgment was delivered on 13 December 2023. The brothers, who were children when adopted, were adults by the time of the hearing.
Their adoptive parents, identified as E. and B. McW., are Irish citizens who were living in New York when the adoption process began. The brothers were adopted simultaneously in Russia on 28 February 2011. The judge said the process had started before the 2010 Act’s establishment day, 1 November 2010, and that the parents completed the procedures required in the United States and Russia.
The family returned to Ireland in June 2015. The parents discovered in 2019, when seeking Irish passports for the brothers, that the adoptions had not been entered in the Register of Intercountry Adoptions. The judge noted that non-registration could have significant consequences, including higher university fees for M., who wished to pursue third-level study.
The applicants sought orders that would lead to both adoptions being registered and recognised in Ireland. The Adoption Authority did not dispute the factual background, and the Attorney General did not take issue with the facts. Both addressed the limits of the court’s section 92 jurisdiction and the need to protect the purposes of the Hague Convention and the 2010 Act. The Attorney General accepted that registration in this limited category would not be contrary to the Act’s scheme and purpose, while reserving the right to seek a definitive interpretation in another case. The Adoption Authority also reserved its position on the existence of the jurisdiction for a higher court.
The judge said section 92 must be applied narrowly, with a high bar, and that the applicants had to establish truly exceptional circumstances. He was satisfied that the parents acted in good faith, did not intentionally circumvent Irish requirements and would have followed them had they been living in Ireland. He also considered the brothers’ relationship with their parents and their views, alongside the wider need to avoid weakening safeguards for children in intercountry adoptions.
Justice Jordan stressed that the ruling was confined to Russian adoptions in process when the 2010 Act commenced and completed relatively soon afterwards. He said he was applying the law to the facts before him, without making broader findings. He granted the orders sought in both proceedings, records 2022/122M and 2022/123M, as set out in the relevant paragraphs of the notices of motion. The judgment does not reproduce those paragraphs’ full terms.