Child in ‘unborn’ court case lives in emergency accommodation

The child at the centre of the Supreme Court case about the constitutional rights of the unborn is now almost a toddler and is living in emergency accommodation with her mother.

She had been living with her Nigerian father and Irish mother in rented accommodation but they had to leave some months ago after the landlord decided to sell.

Since then, the mother and child secured emergency accommodation and the man has been in various forms of temporary accommodation while efforts to get alternative rented accommodation for all three continue.

On Wednesday, the court ruled the unborn has no constitutional rights outside the right to life in the Eighth Amendment.

The man came here in late 2007 and applied for asylum but was refused and lost an appeal in July 2008 against that refusal.

He was also refused subsidiary protection and leave to remain and a deportation order was made against him in October 2008. However, he remained in the State, apparently working unlawfully.

He married an EU national in 2009 and applied for residency here based on that marriage but his application was rejected in November 2010 due to lack of necessary evidence.

In 2014, he began a relationship with a since naturalised African woman by whom he had a child in 2015. He had told the Department of Social Protection he was living with that woman.

In September 2014, he began a relationship with an Irish woman who became pregnant with his child.

The couple applied in late May 2015 for a revocation of the 2008 deportation order on grounds of his prospective parentage of a child who would be an Irish citizen on birth. After the child's birth in August 2015, the High Court joined her as a party to the proceedings.

In December 2015, the man applied for residency in Ireland on the basis of parentage of an Irish citizen and the residency application took priority over the revocation one.

Although the child’s birth and her father’s residency application effectively rendered the revocation legal challenge moot or pointless, the State urged the Supreme Court to decide the legal issues raised because of their general public importance. The Supreme Court agreed to do so but required the State, as a condition of hearing the appeal, to pay the legal costs of the family’s lawyers in opposing the appeal.

The man has since been granted full permission to remain in Ireland, due to his parentage of an Irish citizen.