The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by the birth mother of a child against an adoption order granted to the child’s foster mother.

The case centred on the adoption of a minor, known as Ms B, who has an intellectual disability.

The Child and Family Agency (CFA) and the child’s foster mother, known as Ms A, applied to the High Court ten weeks before Ms B’s 18th birthday for an adoption order under the Adoption Act 2010, and for an order dispensing with the necessity to obtain the consent of the child’s birth parents to the adoption.

Ms B’s birth mother opposed the application for an adoption order.

In the High Court, the trial judge was not persuaded that Ms B understood the significance of adoption, especially its effect on the child’s legal relationship with their birth mother. The court ruled that it was not in Ms B’s best interests to be adopted.

On appeal, the Court of Appeal disagreed, and found that adoption was in Ms B’s best interests.

Statutory criteria

In the Supreme Court judgment delivered today (24 May), Mr Justice Gerard Hogan said that he considered that the majority of the Court of Appeal were correct in concluding that the High Court had erred in failing to make the adoption order sought.

The judge concluded that the proposed adoption order “would clearly satisfy the various statutory criteria” specified in the adoption legislation, and the constitutional requirement that the best interests of the child should be the paramount consideration.

“There comes a point where the child’s best interests are, in fact, better served by adoption by a foster family,” Mr Justice Hogan stated.

“This is the situation here, where the adoption will simply give legal effect to what has been Ms B’s own experience since infancy, namely, that she has been a member of Ms A’s family,” he continued.

‘Tragedy and hope’

He described the case as one in which “human tragedy and hope were mixed”, adding that it involved "complex legal issues".

The birth mother had been a victim of domestic violence and coercive control, but the judge said that she had turned her life around “in an impressive fashion”.

He added that the making of the adoption order also cemented “the emotional bonds of family and security” that Ms B needed.