The High Court ordered that a young child be returned from Poland to Ireland pending a full custody hearing, but stayed the return order until 15 January 2014. The court said a further stay would follow if the mother provided specified written undertakings and evidence of travel arrangements by 13 January.
The interlocutory judgment, delivered by Ms Justice Finlay Geoghegan on 16 December 2013, concerned a child identified by the court as Alan, expressly stated not to be his real name. The parents are identified in the judgment as M.H.A., the father and applicant, and A.P., the mother and respondent.
The court found that the father had consented to the child travelling to Poland for about a month in January 2011, after which they were to return to Ireland. The mother later told him she would not return. The judgment records that the mother’s retention of the child in Poland was wrongful, a point that was not disputed in these Irish proceedings and had also been decided by the Polish District Court. Polish courts had dismissed the father’s Hague Convention return application and his appeal.
The High Court held that Irish courts retained jurisdiction over parental responsibility under the EU regulation governing the case. It was deciding interim arrangements, not the final custody question. The mother had not appeared or been represented at the 20 November hearing, despite repeated opportunities to arrange representation and file evidence. The court heard the father’s submissions and relied on affidavit evidence; there was no oral evidence.
The court ordered joint custody for both parents and gave the mother day-to-day care and control, subject to access for the father as agreed or ordered. It said the child had not seen his father face-to-face for almost three years and that contact should resume carefully, beginning with in-person contact. The court considered the child’s age, limited recollection of his father and possible language difficulties.
Under the proposed undertakings, the mother would bring the child to Ireland by 31 January 2014 for at least two weeks, support daily contact with the father, take part with the child in an expert assessment, return for the full custody hearing and facilitate later telephone or Skype contact if ordered. The father undertook to pay for two weeks’ accommodation in an identified guest house in a location anonymised as “A”, not to seek an order preventing their return to Poland after that visit, and to comply with any access conditions.
If the required undertakings and travel evidence were not provided by the deadline, the return order was to become immediately effective on 15 January, and the court said it would issue the certificate needed for enforcement in Poland. The court adjourned further orders until that date. The judgment does not establish what happened after the adjournment or determine final custody.