The High Court has refused a father’s application for the immediate return to Poland of his daughter, who was retained in Ireland by her mother after a summer access visit in 2025.
The child, who was approaching eight, had lived in Poland and had been primarily cared for by her father. Her mother moved to Ireland in 2023. An agreed summer visit began on 1 July 2025 and was extended until 21 August, but the mother did not return the child after that date.
The father then brought proceedings under the Hague Convention on international child abduction. The High Court accepted that Poland was the child’s habitual residence and that her retention in Ireland was wrongful. It rejected the mother’s claim that the father had consented to a permanent move.
However, Mr Justice Max Barrett found that the grave-risk exception under the Convention had been established.
Central to that finding was video footage from a camera in the father’s Polish home. It showed him entering the sleeping child’s bed while naked shortly before her trip to Ireland. The judge expressly made no finding that the father had committed a criminal offence or that the incident legally constituted child abuse. He accepted that there had been no physical interference with the child.
The court nevertheless found that the incident raised unresolved concerns about judgment, personal boundaries and the child’s immediate safety. No concrete arrangement for alternative care, supervision or immediate child-protection intervention in Poland had been put before the court.
A psychologist also reported that the child did not want to return and had expressed fear about her father becoming angry or nervous and concerns about being left alone. The judge found those objections genuinely held and appropriate to take into account given her age and maturity.
The court stressed that it was not deciding long-term custody or welfare. Proceedings concerning the child’s future care remain before a Polish court. The father’s Hague Convention return application was refused on the particular evidence then before the High Court.