A woman who gave birth to a baby girl during her detention in Mountjoy Prison has secured leave from the High Court to challenge a decision by a District judge on January 26th to keep her in prison for a further 21 days.
Today will be her 74th day of detention in Mountjoy women's prison, the Dóchas Centre.
The woman's identity is at the centre of a dispute between her and the State. She was pregnant when she arrived in Ireland last November on a false passport. She later said she was Moldovan and then admitted coming from Romania via Italy. She failed to produce her passport or any travel documents she had used.
A bail application by the woman was adjourned to next Monday while gardaí continue to try and verify her true identity.
In an affidavit yesterday, the woman's solicitor, Ms Claire O'Regan, said she believed the woman's name was Simona Bujoreanu and that she had arrived in Ireland from Milan on November 22nd, 2004. She had presented a Lithuanian passport at Dublin Airport in another name and was detained pending her removal from the State. She then applied for asylum.
Ms O'Regan said the woman later told gardaí she was a 24-year-old Moldovan widow with no family and that her husband had been shot dead. She had left Moldova and gone to Milan and Bergamo. She failed to give addresses in these cities. She subsequently gave the gardaí another name.
On December 13th the woman claimed she was Simona Bujoreanu, that she came from Romania and that her husband had her passport in Italy. It was clear she had no intention of perpetuating the confusion because she gave her correct name for the purposes of the child's birth, Ms O'Regan said.
The woman was remanded on a number of occasions by the District Court. At a hearing before Judge John Coughlan on January 26th, a garda had asked for her to be detained on the grounds that she had not made reasonable efforts to establish her true identity and had destroyed her identity documents. Section 9 of the 1996 Refugee Act provided for detention on such grounds.
The judge had accepted that a decision on her application for asylum could take four months even though the case was being "fast-tracked". Ms O'Regan said Judge Coughlan had made an order for the further detention of the woman and had said this was because she was "a liar and a fraud". That was the only basis for the continued detention but a detention order must be made on grounds set out in Section 9 of the 1996 Act, Ms O'Regan said.
Mr Feichin McDonagh SC, for the woman, said her legal representatives at the District Court hearing believed the judge made the detention order based on the two grounds advanced by the gardaí and not on the basis that she was a liar and a fraud.