A man who donated his sperm for a lesbian couple to have a child won a legal fight yesterday to keep his son in the Irish Republic.

The Supreme Court judgment was a legal first for Ireland, a predominantly Roman Catholic country where homosexual unions are not recognised in family law. It meant that the couple, who were married in a civil union ceremony in England, cannot resettle in Australia with their 14-month-old boy as they had hoped, but can only take a holiday there for a maximum of six weeks.

Justices Susan Denham and Joseph Finnegan ruled that the infant’s best interests required him to stay in Ireland in proximity to his biological father. Justice Nial Fennelly, the third Supreme Court judge, dissented, arguing that the man’s legal team had offered no evidence that the boy’s welfare would be harmed by leaving the country. The verdict set the stage for a second unprecedented courtroom battle between the man and the couple, to establish whether he should enjoy joint custody of the infant.

“The case is utterly unique and unprecedented,” Justice Fennelly wrote in his dissenting opinion, noting that neither the parental rights of sperm donors nor lesbian couples had been properly defined in Irish law. “Both situations are entirely novel for our courts,” he added.

Neither side has been publicly identified by name, in keeping with Ireland’s policy of granting anonymity to people in family law cases. The lesbian couple — one is from Ireland and the other from Australia — exchanged marriage-style vows in England in January 2006, a month after civil unions were legalised in the United Kingdom.

The Irish woman had already become pregnant through the Irish sperm donor, who signed a contract that recognised his rights to visit the child and ensured that the infant knew his father. It also stipulated that if the mother died, he would have a say in the child’s guardianship.

The boy, who was born in May 2006, received his biological father’s name as his middle name, and the lesbian couple initially granted the man regular visits. But tensions quickly grew, lawyers said.

The couple initially restricted the man’s access, then announced that they planned to travel to Australia for up to a year. The man launched two lawsuits in March, one to restrict the Australian trip and the other to seek joint custody. The latter case is due to be heard in the autumn.

Yesterday’s verdict upheld a judgment by High Court Justice Henry Abbott, who ruled that the lesbian couple could travel with the child to Australia for a maximum of six weeks, then must hand over their passports upon return to Ireland. He suggested that even as a sperm donor, the man should be legally recognised as the boy’s father.

Justice Abbott called the next 12 months “a critical year” in the boy’s development — “a year when a bond is about to open up on an objective scale, a reciprocal scale, between father and son”.

The majority opinion of the Supreme Court agreed that until the man’s custody claim could be considered, the boy should be permitted to travel outside Ireland for only a limited period.

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