The High Court has ordered a child to be returned to Hungary after finding she was wrongfully retained in Ireland following a holiday visit in 2017.
The judgment, delivered by Ms Justice Reynolds on 30 January 2018, concerned an application by the child’s mother under the Hague Convention on international child abduction. The child, identified in the judgment as S. (T.) S., was born in Hungary in December 2008. The parents are Hungarian nationals and were never married. The mother had been the child’s primary carer after the couple separated in 2013.
The father moved to Ireland with his wife in June 2016. The mother agreed that the child could visit him from 10 to 31 July 2017, after he gave a written undertaking to return her. Before the return date, he told the mother the child would remain in Ireland. He accepted that the retention was wrongful under the Convention. The court also recorded that the child had been habitually resident in Hungary and that the mother held and was exercising custody rights there.
The father opposed return on two grounds: that returning the child would expose her to a grave risk of harm or an intolerable situation, and that the court should take account of her objections. No oral evidence was given at the January 2018 hearing. The court considered an assessor’s report based on an interview with the child about five months after she arrived in Ireland.
The child said she did not want to return to Hungary and was unhappy with her living conditions there. The assessor described her as emotionally upset but able to express her feelings, settled in Ireland, and wishing to remain with her father. The child also said she did not want to see her mother. The judge accepted that the child was old enough and mature enough for her views to be considered, but had serious concerns about whether those views were authentically her own. The judgment cited the absence of objective evidence of earlier difficulties in the mother-child relationship and the limited probing of how the child had reached her stated position.
The court rejected the grave-risk defence. It said the father’s allegations about childcare arrangements and the mother’s partner were unsupported by objective evidence; the allegation of aggression and abuse did not include physical violence. The judge added that there was no evidence that the Hungarian courts could not protect the child.
The court declared the child had been wrongfully retained in Ireland and directed her return forthwith to Hungary under Article 12 of the Convention. It did not determine long-term custody or access arrangements.