Get all the very latest news in Ireland straight to your email every single day Sign up! Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Invalid Email

A toddler whose parents are brother and sister is to be adopted.

A High Court judge ruled that the agreement of the two-year-old boy's mother to a freeing order can be dispensed with because she is incapable of giving consent.

The little boy was born in 2012. His mother was 13 when she became pregnant by her 15-year-old brother.

Despite being disputed by the boy, DNA testing proved the baby was his son.

Mr Justice O’Hara's verdict came in a case involving family circumstances described as “depressing” and “hugely unsatisfactory”.

Both the mother and her son were taken into care - in different settings - within months of the birth. With no suitable family arrangements available, the toddler has since been placed with another couple.

The Trust involved in the case sought a freeing order on the basis that it is in the boy’s bests interests to be adopted - a view the judge held to be clearly correct.

Although the child’s father took little part in the proceedings, Mr Justice O’Hara had to decide whether the mother’s agreement should be dispensed with because she is incapable of giving consent or whether she is unreasonably withholding consent.

Now aged 16, the court heard she has had an “exceptionally difficult life” with recurring social services involvement due to a variety of concerns about her, her siblings and her mother and step-father.

“None of this is her fault - she is a victim of the way in which she was raised,” the judge said. “It is hard to identify any positive life experience which she has enjoyed.”

An educational psychologist’s report on her mathematical ability found only 3% of pupils the same age would have scored the same or lower on a numerical operations test and just 16% on reasoning. She produced stronger results on reading and spelling abilities.

With staff at her children’s home categorising her as “a very vulnerable young girl”, the judge also detailed a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist’s report which “sets out in grim detail how miserable her life has been”.

The expert stated: “She is not in a position to fully understand the possible consequences of the various decisions which have to be made for herself and for the boy.

“Her reluctance to fully engage in the assessment process is one manifestation of this but the history and her responses during interviews have also informed my opinion in this regard.”

Based on her reports Mr Justice O’Hara ruled that the mother is not competent to make a decision on whether the child should be adopted. In a judgement made public last week he said: “She is undoubtedly capable of making some decisions as is shown by some elements of the psychological assessment but not a decision which is of a magnitude and which has the consequences of the present one.

“It appears to me that this finding on her competence undermines the proposition that she can be properly regarded as unreasonably withholding her agreement to adoption.”

The judge confirmed: “I am satisfied that the agreement of the mother to the making of an adoption order for the child should be dispensed with because she is incapable of giving her agreement.”