A 44-year-old foreign national has been remanded on bail for sentence after she pleaded guilty to a number of offences including providing false information to get a passport for her young son by saying that the child’s father was Irish.
The woman, who cannot be named to protect the identity of her son under the provisions of the Children’s Act, pleaded guilty to all four offences when she was arraigned before the jury panel and Judge Dermot Sheehan at Cork Circuit Criminal Court on Monday.
The woman pleaded guilty that on July 29th, 2009, she provided false information at the Civil Registration Office, Adelaide Street, Cork that she knew to be false, claiming a named man was the biological father of her son, contrary to Section 69(3) of the Civil Registration Act 2004.
She also pleaded guilty to three other offences: that at Watercourse Road Garda Station on July 29th, 2009 and May 12th, 2017 and Anglesea Street Garda Station on June 30th, 2012, she provided false information in a passport application, knowing it to be false on each occasion.
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Defence counsel Majorie Farrelly SC said that in light of her client’s late decision to plead guilty to the offences, she was applying for an adjournment to allow her to obtain a number of reports that she believed would assist the court when it came to sentencing.
Ms Farrelly said that her client was currently under the care of a consultant psychiatrist and she applied for a psychiatric report and a probation report that would include information on her client’s background that might assist the court.
Judge Sheehan granted the application for the preparation of a psychiatric report but said he would defer a decision on a probation report having heard that the defendant had no previous conviction, and he adjourned the matter until February 18th for sentence.
Det Sgt Keith Cleary of the Garda National Immigration Bureau previously outlined the background to the garda investigation into the case, which also involved a 65-year-old Irish man who has already pleaded guilty to a number of charges in relation to his involvement in the fraud.
Det Sgt Cleary told Cork District Court when first charging the accused that the woman came to Ireland from abroad in March 2008 to study English on a permit and was either pregnant at the time or became pregnant soon after and gave birth to a son in December 2008.
The woman accompanied the man to the registry office on July 29th, 2008 to obtain a false birth certificate for her son, claiming her co-accused was the child’s biological father. They went to Watercourse Road Garda Station with the false birth certificate to apply for an Irish passport.
He said obtaining the false Irish passport for the child gave the woman an immigration advantage and she was able to apply for an Irish passport for herself and her other children who were all born here since, and those passports entitled her to claim social welfare payments.
He said the woman and the child’s father, a foreign national whom she subsequently married in Ireland, went to the Registry Office in Roscommon in 2017 and applied to have the man’s name entered on the child’s birth certificate as the child’s biological father.
He said that in order to do this, they had to provide a DNA certificate confirming that her husband was the child’s biological father, and they duly provided such a certificate to support their application to have the man’s name entered on the birth certificate as the child’s father.
He said the State would argue that the alleged offences by both accused “called into question the integrity of both the Irish birth certificate registration system and the Irish passport system”, which would have serious repercussions for both systems.
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