Henry McDonald in Dublin
theguardian.com, Thursday 24 October 2013
Embarrassing U-turn comes after DNA tests prove that girl put into care, 7, is biological daughter of Dublin couple
Tallaght Garda station, where the seven-year-old girl was taken before being put into care. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA
Ireland's police force and health service have been forced into an embarrassing U-turn over the seizure of a young Roma girl from her family because she had blue eyes and blonde hair.
The Irish justice minister, Alan Shatter, has asked the head of the Irish police force, the Garda Síochána, to report on this case and another one involving a two-year-old Roma boy also taken from his family by the authorities.
The seven-year-old was handed back to her Roma parents this evening after DNA results showed that she was in fact their child.
After a family court hearing in central Dublin, the family issued a statement stating that there was never "any proper or sufficient basis to take their daughter away from them".
The two-year-old boy was removed on Tuesday night from a family living in Athlone, Co Westmeath, in the Irish midlands. DNA samples were taken from the child as well as the Roma couple who are the child's parents.
Police officers then returned the boy to the family this morning. It is not clear if they did so following the results of any DNA tests.
The girl had been held in care by the health service after the police raided the family's home in Tallaght, Dublin, on Monday afternoon. Garda officers refused to believe the child's parents, who protested that she was their daughter. But the parents and their other children always insisted that the child was their daughter and said tonight that had been verified.
In a reference to the case in Greece of the girl known as Maria, where it has been established that a blonde child was not the daughter of a Roma couple who were looking after her, the Dublin family criticised those who tried to falsely link the two cases. The family said tonight, via their solicitor Waheed Mudah, that their ordeal had "nothing to do" with events elsewhere.
As the family prepared to welcome their daughter back home, a veteran human rights campaigner for Irish Travellers and the Roma community demanded an inquiry into how the authorities had treated the two families.
Martin Collins, of the lobby group Pavee Point, described the way that the children were taken into care as "abductions".
Collins said: "We are extremely concerned and worried about these developments. We hope it is not the beginning of some sort of pattern where children of Roma parents who are not dark-skinned and have brown eyes are taken away one after the other for DNA test after DNA test."
Shatter said the police had acted in good faith in removing the children from their families. "The law provides clear powers for An Garda Siochana where it is believed that a child may be in danger. The Health Service Executive and the courts are involved in making the appropriate decisions.
"Urgent procedures are available to ensure that the safety of a child can be assured while necessary inquiries are being made. While such procedures can be understandably distressing for parents, the reality is that not invoking the procedures can involve taking a risk with the safety of a child if you don't act on the basis of the information that is available at the time."
From early on Wednesday morning, the sisters of the girl Gardai seized from the family in Dublin insisted that they were always confident that she would be handed back to them.
They said that the family were all traumatised by the ordeal, including the child at the centre of the controversy.
Their parents, who are in their 30s, had maintained it was their child, born in Dublin in 2006. It is understood the family have been in Ireland for more than seven years.
They live in a quiet suburban street with neatly kept gardens and a mixture of privately owned and rented terraces and semi-detached houses.
The sisters said their house has been the target of repeated attacks from local youths in the recent past. In response, the family had installed a CCTV camera trained on the front garden and pathway up to the door as well as fitting perspex glass bolted on to the living room window to protect them from missiles.
It also emerged yesterday that the controversy in Tallaght was sparked by an anonymous posting on Facebook. An unnamed female member of the public tipped off television channel TV3 about the presence of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed child at the house on Monday morning.
A researcher at the station passed on the Facebook message to an investigative TV3 reporter, who then contacted the gardai at the station in Tallaght.
Meanwhile, the Roma father of a two year-old-boy has expressed relief after his son was returned to his family.
The father of two said his wife, originally from Bucharest in Romania, had been extremely distressed and unable to sleep after their son was kept overnight. He said that when the gardai arrived at the house, he challenged them to take a sample of his own blood to prove the child belonged to the family.
He said the Health Services Executive informed him that he could pick up the child at a HSE centre around midday on Wednesday.
Irish police return blonde girl to Roma family | World news | theguardian.com
