The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by an anonymised family seeking new birth certificates and a marriage certificate in the identities they use after entering Ireland's witness protection programme.
The family, identified as Robert, Jane, Alan, Brendan, Ciara and Darren Doe, was relocated abroad after the first appellant provided information to Gardaí about a criminal gang. The State accepts that there remains an active and credible threat to their lives.
As part of the Witness Security Programme, family members adopted new names and were provided with documents including passports and driving licences in those identities. However, the first five appellants retained birth certificates in their original names. The sixth child, born after relocation, was registered under the family's new name.
The appellants argued that the absence of new certificates created practical difficulties and infringed constitutional and European Convention rights. Evidence before the court included Garda evidence that the ability to obtain new birth and marriage certificates would be helpful to the operation of the programme.
Chief Justice Donal O'Donnell accepted that the Constitution protects a right to have a person's identity correctly recognised and recorded by the State. That right, however, supported the accuracy and reliability of official registers rather than a right to have a civil record rewritten to reflect an assumed identity.
The court also rejected the argument that the right to life required the State to issue replacement certificates. There was no evidence that the absence of new certificates created an additional threat to the family's lives, although it could cause inconvenience and difficulties maintaining their assumed identities.
The court distinguished earlier cases involving gender recognition, where legal non-recognition affected fundamental aspects of a person's identity and status. It held that the circumstances of the witness protection family did not create an equivalent constitutional or Convention requirement.
The Chief Justice said there may be practical and policy arguments for legislation allowing new certificates for witness protection participants, but that was a matter for the Oireachtas rather than a constitutional obligation. The appeal was dismissed.