Ms Aine McGuirk:

The people for whom we talk about adoption are foster carers becoming adopters. It is what some foster carers would wish to do for the children in their care if that is the right thing for the child at the time. What has happened in years gone by is that it is only at the very end because many of our foster carers are very much dependent on the foster carer allowance to give the child the kind of life the child should have. Previously, if you adopted the child, you lost the allowance and the child became the same as any child in your family. There is now a system within Tusla whereby you can apply to have the allowance continued. That allowance has not been reviewed in ten years so it will not really help to pay the electricity bill. The foster care allowance and the fact it has not been reviewed in ten years is something else that needs to be looked at. The members of the committee are all politicians and they know what that means. However, it has been a positive thing that Tusla will now give a fostering allowance to a family after they have adopted a child.

The bit that is still not 100% is whether that child will then get aftercare services, which are fantastic if they get them. They get Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, grants, the child is treated as an individual for all their purposes, and no income coming into the foster family affects what the child gets in the form of further education, grants etc. It is not clear whether the allowance could continue into what we call the aftercare period for education and so on.