The US State Department in Washington is considering a request from an Irish court to give information on the issuing of passports to a woman and two children at the centre of a family law dispute here.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is a US citizen and the estranged wife of an Irish citizen. They have two children, aged three and four, and were in the process of completing a legal separation when she left the State.
According to the woman's husband, her passport and those of their children had been handed in to the gardai. Last December the court issued an order that the children not be removed from the jurisdiction until the proceedings were completed. The couple had joint custody of the children, who spent their days with their father and the nights with their mother, and alternate weekends with each parent.
They were with their mother on the weekend of June 19-20th and failed to return. According to their father, they travelled to Belfast and from there to London and on to the United States, travelling on replacement passports issued by the American embassy in Dublin.
The local circuit court issued an order asking the Internal Naturalisation Service of the US embassy to hand over all documentation in its possession relating to the two children. In particular the father's solicitor was seeking information on where the woman entered the United States.
This letter was acknowledged, but, according to an embassy spokeswoman, they had no information to give. A motion was served on the embassy to produce the documents they have in their possession relating to how the woman got the passports and her whereabouts. This motion was not accepted by the embassy.
The embassy spokeswoman told The Irish Times the embassy had no information on the whereabouts of the woman and the children. "We don't have exit visas and neither do you. A mother travelling with kids would not raise any suspicions. We don't track US citizens and, if we did, information would have to be released according to the Freedom of Information Act, with the permission of the person."
Asked how replacement passports came to be issued when the original passports were being held by the Garda, she said the embassy had not been notified. If it had, it would have been on the computer.