After a gruelling dawn flight, Eamon and Antoinette McGuckin were looking forward to a relaxing family holiday with their three young children. But instead of a quiet week in the Algarve sun the McGuckins became identified with the reckless activities of middle-class British parents abroad.

Yesterday the couple fled back to Britain hours before they were due to appear in court after allegations that their children were taken into protective custody after they had fallen into drunken stupor. In Northern Ireland friends and family puzzled how this respected bank manager and his glamorous wife — described as model parents who rarely drank — became embroiled in an international incident.

Mr and Mrs McGuckin and their children — Adam, 1, Amy, 2, and Aaron, 6 — had arrived in Vilamoura on Friday lunchtime. At 10pm the emergency services were called after reports that Mr McGuckin, 34, had collapsed in the hotel reception while his 32-year-old wife was unconscious and vomiting in front of her children.

The couple were summoned to appear at the Family and Children Court in Faro at 3pm today to prove that their children were not at risk. Dozens of Portuguese and British journalists gathered outside amid scenes not seen since Kate and Gerry McCann were made suspects in their disappearance of their daughter Madeleine last year.

Then the Foreign Office announced that the McGuckins had left Portugal.

Inside the court building Judge Beatrix Borges issued a statement saying that the case would be closed as the court had no international jurisdiction. However, she added that evidence would be sent to social services in Northern Ireland with a “view to investigating the necessity of promotion and protection of the three British children.”

A spokeswoman for the Northern Health and Social Care Trust which covers the McGuckins’ hometown of Maghera, said last night: “We are not commenting on individual cases but the Northern trust treats all child welfare issues as paramount.”

In Portugal there was bewilderment and allegations that the family had been helped to flee.

The Foreign Office denied that it had colluded with the couple. “I can promise you it is not part of any elaborate plan to bring them home,” a spokesman said. “There is no advantage for the Foreign Office looking as we were helping them leave. There were no legal restrictions for them having to stay and there is no obligation for them to be in court.”

But Dr Luis Villas-Boas, the head of the refuge where the McGuckin children were taken, described the couple’s decision to leave Portugal as “unprecedented”. He said: “They should not have left when they were notified to attend court. I think that could cause them problems.”

Reports of the incident first emerged on Portuguese television on Saturday night. They were quickly picked up by British journalists who had been in the Algarve covering the case of missing Madeleine McCann in nearby Praia da Luz. The family were soon tracked down to a room at the three-star Mourable Hotel. Stories emerged that the parents had spent the day drinking at a 1¤-a-pint bar before going for dinner at 8pm. They are alleged to have collapsed after returning to the hotel at 10pm.

But in Northern Ireland a different picture was emerging. Friends and relatives described a respectable couple who rarely drank and were devoted to their children Mr McGuckin’s brother, Cahal, said: “They live for their family and allegations like the ones we are hearing at the moment are utterly out of keeping with the people we know.”

The couple told their hotel manager that they had been overcome by the early morning start and the Algarve heat. Mrs McGuckin asked for the results of blood tests taken at hospital to prove she was not drunk.

Kate Lagan, a local councillor, insisted that Mrs McGuckin had been ill, which was why an ambulance was called. “Late last night I spoke to somebody close to the family and there’s a very different picture emerging,” she said.

“Even yesterday it was fairly obvious that there was something very strange about this.” Emergency services on the Algarve said it was common to have to take British parents to hospital after falling into alcoholic comas. Many Portuguese wondered why the case was being taken so seriously.

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