Single father wins order overturning adoption

AN UNMARRIED father has won a High Court order overturning the adoption without his knowledge of his eight-year-old daughter by his former partner’s husband.

The matter will now go back to the Adoption Board which will have to consult the father before reaching a decision on the adoption application.

The father had brought his proceedings against the Adoption Board over its failure to notify him of the adoption application concerning his daughter, referred to as S.

In a reserved judgment yesterday, Mr Justice Iarfhlaith O’Neill quashed the adoption order of June 2007 after finding the board acted unlawfully in allowing the adoption application to proceed in July 2006 without notifying the father of it and hearing from him.

He ruled that the decision to allow the application to proceed breached the father’s constitutional rights to fair procedures and natural justice. It breached his rights under Articles 6 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights providing for the right to a fair hearing before an independent tribunal in the determination of civil rights and the right to respect for private and family life.

The case raised issues under the Adoption Act and the European Convention on Human Rights relating to the scope of a natural father’s right to be heard in adoption proceedings and involved interpretation of new provisions in the Adoption Act concerning notification of a natural father of a proposed adoption.

A “child-centred approach” was appropriate to interpreting the relevant provisions of the Adoption Act relating to notification of natural fathers, the judge said.

The judge stressed his decision related only to the requirement to notify the father of the application, not whether the adoption order should be made. He ruled that the board was not entitled to rely wholly on claims by the mother of fears for her safety in deciding not to notify the father.

The mother’s version of events, when compared to the full picture which emerged in court, was not just “wholly inadequate” but also “unjustly damnified” the father and the board should have sought independent reliable evidence.

While the man and woman had been very young at the outset of their relationship and it may have been fractious and inadequate, it was of relatively lengthy duration, some four years, and the man had had “a relatively normal” parental relationship with S for the first three years of her life.

The board was also required under amended provisions of the Adoption Act, but had failed to make efforts to trace the father to notify him.

The applicant father had met the child’s mother in 1999 when he was 19 and she was 15. Their child S was born in early 2001. The man was charged with arson of their council house one time when only he was there. He claimed he was under the influence of controlled drugs at the time and wished to take his own life because he feared the woman was leaving him.

He absconded to Britain in 2004 and his only contact with S then was through birthday and Christmas cards. He later returned, admitted arson and received a three-year suspended sentence. He claimed he was part of S’s life before leaving for Britain, that he had sought access to her on his return but learned of the adoption order in late 2007.

The woman had met another man in late 2003, whom she married in autumn 2005. They applied to adopt S, the adoption order was granted in June 2007 and they also secured a new birth certificate in which the woman’s husband was named as the father of S.