The High Court approved the Adoption Authority of Ireland’s application to make an adoption order for a child without consulting her father, who could not be located despite repeated efforts. The approval was granted under section 30(3) of the Adoption Acts 2010–2017. The court did not make the adoption order itself.
The application concerned a proposed adoption by the mother’s husband. The child supported the adoption and regarded the applicant as her father, the judgment said. The mother had given full, free and informed consent. The court found there was ample evidence that proceeding with the adoption was in the child’s best interests.
The father was named on the child’s birth certificate and had lived with the mother and child during the first five months after the child’s birth. After the parents separated, he had access, but contact became sporadic. The family relocated to Ireland with his consent in 2007. The judgment records that the father’s last contact with the child was in 2014 and that he had not been in contact with the mother since that year.
The Authority, the Child and Family Agency and the mother pursued several routes to reach him. Attempts using the mother’s contact details failed; enquiries were made through overseas agencies and an embassy; relatives were contacted; and correspondence was sent to the child’s paternal grandparents. The Authority also asked the agency to try personal service, but it could not be effected. The court accepted that the father had not been excluded from the process: efforts to involve him had failed because he could not be found.
The judge distinguished the case from an earlier decision warning against relying solely on a mother’s unsupported account when a father is not consulted. Here, independent enquiries and documentary material were consistent with the mother’s account. The court also considered the child’s welfare and the father’s rights to fair procedures and family life.
Although the mother could provide the father’s name and other details, those details had not enabled anyone to locate him. The judge said section 30(5), which addresses a mother’s inability or refusal to identify the father, did not fit the evidence: the mother had named him and had not sworn the statutory declaration required by that provision. The court instead approved the application under section 30(3), agreeing with the Authority that consultation was inappropriate given the failed tracing efforts and the history of the relationship.
The judgment, delivered electronically on 2 February 2021, approved the making of an adoption order without consulting the father. It did not itself make that adoption order.