The High Court has ruled that the founder of a pregnancy advice agency had unlawful custody this summer of a baby born to a college student who had sought help from the agency.
The agency is believed to have associations with the Irish anti-abortion movement.
Ms Justice Laffoy said the agency founder had "singularly failed" to show that the 21-year-old mother's decision to give up her baby for adoption by him and his wife was "a free decision unimpaired by her awful circumstances or by any pressure or influence on his part".
The mother's family handed over the baby girl to the man four days after her birth this summer. The baby, referred to in the High Court judgment as Baby A, is now with the Eastern Health Board.
The High Court case was brought by the health board against the man, his wife and the baby's mother.
The judge said there was a strong suggestion that the mother was the "victim of the deliberate design to `ring fence' her and her baby; to remove Baby A as far as possible from the supervision of the applicant [the Eastern Health Board] and other regulatory authorities; and to isolate the mother from independent legal advice and from counselling so as to overbear her will".
The judge said the man had been aware that a "private" adoption to a non-relative was unlawful since April this year.
Ms Justice Laffoy delivered her judgment after an in camera hearing, and ordered that it be published in the public interest with all names edited from it to protect the interests of the infants. It was published at the weekend.
Ms Justice Laffoy's judgment also refers to a Baby B - the baby of a 17-year-old, second-level student who was in the custody of the agency founder and his wife between April and June this year. The health board expressed concern to gardai in June about the whereabouts of Baby B. The man handed Baby B back to her grandmother during the time he and his wife had custody of Baby A.
The agency was established by the man in May 1995, and voluntary counsellors have provided help and advice for about 2,000 women in crisis pregnancies, according to the man's affidavit.
Baby A's mother was one of approximately 50 girls with crisis pregnancies referred by the agency to the same GP in Dublin in the last 1 1/2 years.
Ms Justice Laffoy declared: "It is hard to imagine a more glaring situation of conflict of interest than one in which a person who assumes the role of counsellor and adviser to a young girl in the later stages of a crisis pregnancy proposes himself and his wife as prospective adoptive parents of the baby and proposes taking custody of the baby within days of the baby's birth."
On the first day of the hearing, Ms Justice Laffoy ordered that Baby A be produced before the court the following night. She stayed sitting until 1 a.m. the following day until the infant was produced in court.