The High Court recognised Northern Ireland care and recovery orders concerning a 14-year-old girl who had travelled to Dublin, rejecting her father’s objections to recognition. The court did not decide where she should be placed if returned to Northern Ireland, and no application to enforce either order was before it.
The Belfast Health and Social Care Trust asked the court to recognise a 2010 care order and an August 2011 recovery order under the EU’s Brussels II regulation. The girl, referred to in the judgment by the pseudonym Dona, had been living in Northern Ireland under the Trust’s care. After leaving for Dublin on 25 August 2011, she was located by the Trust and accommodated by the Health Service Executive.
The father argued that recognition would be manifestly contrary to public policy, citing alleged degrading treatment in the placement, including claims that other children threw pork at Dona because of her religious dietary choices and that staff failed to protect her. The judge accepted, for the purpose of the recognition application, that Dona had been unhappy and may have suffered at the hands of other children. But she found no evidence that the Trust’s staff had breached Dona’s constitutional rights or a duty owed to her.
The judge said the court’s role was limited: it could refuse recognition only on specified grounds and could not review the substance of the Northern Ireland judgments. She concluded that the high threshold of a manifest conflict with public policy had not been met. She also found that the orders were not barred from recognition because Dona had not been heard, or because the father had been denied an opportunity to be heard.
The care order placed Dona in the Trust’s care but did not specify a particular placement. The recovery order likewise did not direct that she return to her previous placement. The judge noted that recognition could facilitate the Trust’s recovery of Dona, but did not rule on enforcement or her destination. She said Northern Ireland’s courts remained responsible for supervising the care arrangements and directed that the Irish guardian ad litem’s report be sent to Dona’s Northern Ireland solicitor and guardian.
The court also refused the father’s application for an order requiring the HSE to seek asylum for Dona, finding no factual basis for it on the evidence before the court. It refused his request to stay recognition pending an appeal, concluding a stay was not in Dona’s best interests. The orders included a restraint on the father contacting or attempting to contact her if he learned her whereabouts while she remained in Ireland.