A Supreme Court judge has concluded that the Adoption Authority of Ireland cannot make a domestic adoption order for two children whose adoption in Country A did not follow the Hague Convention process. The children had lived with their aunt and her husband in Ireland since 2012. The judgment records that the court’s majority took a different approach to a possible route forward.
Justice William McKechnie delivered his judgment on 12 July 2018 in an appeal concerning five legal questions referred by the High Court. The case involved a married couple, identified in the judgment as CB and PB, seeking to adopt two siblings who were PB’s niece and nephew. Their identities and Country A’s name were withheld.
The children were born in Country A in November 2006 and September 2008. PB applied to a provincial office there in September 2011; the judgment says that office was not Country A’s competent authority for intercountry adoptions. The adoption was approved in January 2012 and registered the following month. The children came to Ireland with the couple in April 2012. The couple later applied for a domestic adoption, and the Authority declared them eligible and suitable in March 2015.
The couple accepted that the Country A adoption could not be recognised in Ireland under the Adoption Act 2010 or common law. The dispute was whether the Authority could nevertheless make a domestic adoption order. The High Court had answered yes, reasoning that the unrecognised foreign adoption did not prevent a new Irish order.
Justice McKechnie disagreed. He held that the circumstances remained an intercountry adoption within the Hague Convention and that the required safeguards and procedures had not been followed. He said the children’s later residence in Ireland could not turn the case into a domestic adoption. He also concluded that the earlier decision in M.F. v An Bord Uchtála no longer represented the law, and that the children were not eligible for domestic adoption under section 23 of the 2010 Act.
His answers were that the Country A adoption was not recognisable, the Authority lacked jurisdiction to make a domestic adoption order, and the children were not eligible for that order. He said the question about the children’s original status did not strictly arise, but answered that it did not remain. These were Justice McKechnie’s conclusions. The source includes judgments reaching a different view, so they should not be presented as the Supreme Court’s collective ruling.
Justice McKechnie said a retrospective effort to meet the Convention requirements with Country A’s cooperation would be the best outcome if feasible, but noted substantial legal and practical uncertainties. He rejected using section 92 of the 2010 Act to register the existing adoption as an alternative. He said the children would not be removed from Ireland and that guardianship and custody arrangements could help protect their family life.