An Irish-Canadian father has run into a brick wall at the Immigration Department over how the names of his newborn twins should appear on their birth certificates.
Sean Scully, who has lived in Hong Kong for five years, wants the names of daughter Meabh and son Padraig to appear with the acute accents used in Irish to denote a long vowel.
But the department says accents and other diacritical marks used in various languages to indicate pronunciation can't be used because it accepts only Chinese and English and its software isn't equipped to show accents.
Scully says his wife found out about the rule in September when she went to register the twins within the required 42 days after their birth.
'The Birth Register Office told my wife that they only accept English and Chinese for the birth register and the accent on 'a' and 'e' is not allowed,' Scully said. 'The officer told my wife they don't have the software to do it.'
The twins were issued with certificates without the accents but Scully wasn't satisfied and wrote to protest.