The Court of Appeal has upheld an order requiring a child who came to Ireland after leaving Ukraine during the Russian invasion to be returned to that country without further delay.
The child, identified as W, left Ukraine with his mother in March 2022 after spending eight days sheltering in the basement of his father's apartment building. They travelled first to Poland and moved to Ireland in November 2022.
The father maintained that he had agreed only to a temporary move for safety reasons and expected W to return after about two months. The mother argued that consent extended for the duration of the war. The Court of Appeal upheld the High Court's finding that the original arrangement was temporary and that the subsequent move to Ireland occurred without the father's consent.
The court also upheld findings that the mother had deliberately withheld W's precise location. The father said he learned that W was in Ireland only around June 2023 and then pursued legal steps seeking his return.
W, who was old enough for his views to be considered, told a family-law assessor that he was afraid to return because of the war. The Court accepted that his fears were genuine, but found that some of the information underlying them was incorrect, including his belief that his father's area was frequently attacked and lacked air defences.
Updated evidence obtained for the appeal showed significant attacks and casualties in the wider Kyiv region. However, the father's village in the Boryspil district had suffered no recorded attack or damage. The father also undertook to relocate W to western Ukraine or evacuate him to Poland if conditions deteriorated, and to arrange psychological support.
Mr Justice Donald Binchy held that the mother had not established the high threshold required for the Hague Convention's grave-risk exception. The court also found insufficient evidence that W had become settled in Ireland for Convention purposes.
All grounds of appeal were dismissed and the High Court return order was affirmed.