Action over refusal to allow girl return

A Chinese couple living and working here are challenging the minister for justice’s refusal to allow their Irish-born 3-year-old daughter return here to live with them after staying with her grandparents in China.

Jiayi Shao was refused permission earlier this year to re-enter the country after being sent to stay with her grandparents in 2009 when both her parents were working and studying.

Meijiao Yu and her husband Xiao Shao, legally resident in Clondalkin, Dublin, claim the family has been torn apart as a result of the decision.

Ms Yu told the court that she was aged 25, “young and inexperienced,” and she and her husband were under significant stress when their daughter was born in May 2009. They had not planned to have a child until their circumstances were more secure.

When their daughter was four months, they sent her to China to live with her grandparents for a short time. That decision was “very difficult” but was taken “out of great love and concern”, believing it to be in the child’s best interests as they were both working and studying and not then in a secure financial position to ensure her proper care.

They were also not aware, by sending her to her grandparents, that they were putting an obstacle in the way of being reunited when their circumstances improved, she said. They never intended the separation would be long-term.

At the High Court yesterday, Ms Justice Maureen Clark granted leave to the family to challenge the decision by the minister for justice and equality refusing re-entry to the child. The case is supported by the Irish Refugee Council.

The case comes back before the court next month.