The High Court set an interim care schedule for a three-year-old child at the centre of a dispute between her parents over whether she should live in Ireland or the United Arab Emirates. The court said the arrangements would continue until a full hearing, when it would review the matter.
Under the order, the mother was to have the child until 6pm on 31 January 2016, then collect her each Thursday evening and return her on Sunday at 6pm to the applicant’s sister at an anonymised address in County K. The court said the schedule was intended to preserve meaningful contact with the father’s family while avoiding a full transition at once. It also ordered daily Skype contact with the father for eight weeks and said contact could expand if he could travel to Ireland.
The court continued an earlier order granting the father custody, exercisable by him or his sister on his behalf. It directed that the child see her father at his sister’s home before leaving with her mother, and that the parents explain the arrangement to the child together. The mother was required to keep her solicitor informed of her exact address, and her passports were to remain with her solicitors. The court said the Irish High Court retained sole and exclusive jurisdiction and sought undertakings from both parents not to start proceedings elsewhere.
The dispute followed the mother’s decision not to return with the child to the UAE after travelling to Ireland for Christmas in December 2015. The judgment states that the child had lived in the UAE and attended school in Abu Dhabi. The court found there had been a wrongful retention in Ireland, but said the immediate arrangements had to be based on the child’s best interests while the case remained pending.
Psychologist Dr Anne Byrne Lynch recommended that, if the child were to return to the UAE, she should spend at least two months with her mother first to strengthen their relationship. She said the child’s emotional security should be prioritised once basic safety was addressed. The court accepted the psychologist’s evidence that both parents loved the child and were competent, but expressed concern about the mother’s admitted lies, her failure to surrender passports as ordered, and uncertainty over her longer-term plans. These were interim proceedings; the court did not make a final decision on the child’s long-term residence.
The judgment records competing positions on residence. The father sought the child’s return to the UAE, where he worked, while the mother wished to remain in Ireland and educate the child there. The court asked both parents to reflect on long-term arrangements and obtain a further report from the psychologist before the full hearing.