Ms Susan Lohan:

It is imperative that we stay within the convention. To deviate from that and to go down the road of pursuing more bilateral agreements will bring back us to this table in the next decade or so, where we will undoubtedly be reviewing corrupt adoptions. I make no apology for using that phrase, because that is what is in the ISS report, which evaluated adoptions from Vietnam, with which we had a bilateral agreement, in 2009. To the credit of the then Government, that agreement was suspended. There was not only an international report on those adoptions but also a domestic report done by a Vietnamese Government department, which found evidence of the same corruption. It is naive to think that there are not people in Vietnam who are willing to exploit children and vulnerable families for this. Nobody suggests that prospective adoptive parents in Ireland are corrupt. Highly organised people in the sending countries are corrupt. The expression "triad gangs" has been used. They are not only involved in the corrupt trafficking of children for adoption abroad; they are engaged in trafficking abroad, because they are aware of the fact that there is a market for young children, which is demand-led. Is there anybody in this room apart from the Deputy across from me who would argue with that?