The District Court refused the Child and Family Agency’s application to override two parents’ objections to their young child travelling abroad for six weeks with foster carers. Judge Rosemary Horgan said the child’s care status was uncertain and the parents’ objections were not unreasonable or irrational.
The application was made under section 47 of the Child Care Act 1991. The Agency sought to dispense with parental consent for a passport, visa and the trip, and to authorise a social worker or another Agency representative to arrange those documents and travel.
The child had been in the Agency’s voluntary care since shortly after birth. The mother signed an admission-to-care form five days after the child was born in 2015. It specified an expected period of six months. The parents did not sign a further agreement after that period, and the judge described the child’s care status as uncertain. The parents had not asked for the child to be returned to them.
According to the social worker’s evidence, the mother opposed the trip because the child was too young to travel so far and the holiday would affect access with her and the child’s siblings. The father, recently released from prison, said he did not want access disrupted while he was building a relationship with the child. Both parents were working towards reunification, and the Agency’s evidence referred to addiction issues and efforts to address them. The court made no finding that either parent had failed in their duty to the child or that the statutory threshold for intervention had been established.
The Agency said the child was attached to the foster carers and would be harmed by separation from them for six weeks. The parents had been told about the proposed holiday only shortly before the application. The Agency said it had delayed informing them while seeking their cooperation to register the child’s birth. The application itself was filed five days before the planned holiday. The judge criticised the late timing and noted that the Agency could have sought an interim care order when the parents declined to renew the voluntary-care agreement.
The judge adjourned the matter to give the parents time to consider the application with legal advice. They were not present on the adjourned date. In refusing the requested orders, Judge Horgan said the parents retained custody and guardianship rights and had to be consulted on parental decisions. She also observed that section 47 concerns a child “in the care” of the Agency, while the voluntary agreement had expired and the parents had declined to renew it. The court did not authorise the passport, visa or travel, and did not determine the child’s longer-term care arrangements.