Liam Twomey (Wexford, Fine Gael)

This is minor legislation. It seems strange that the Government always wants to hang on to its little piece of inequality and discrimination, no matter how minor the legislation. I do not understand why adoptive parents cannot be given 18 weeks' paid maternity leave in the same way as a natural mother. One of the arguments made is that a pregnant woman needs to rest for two weeks prior to giving birth and two extra weeks are granted to allow for incorrect dates.

As Dr. Devins will understand, the process of adopting a child, whether within this country or from abroad, is tortuous. There are numerous meetings with social workers and a meeting in one's own house. One must obtain a passport and deal with many foreign embassies to arrange to travel to many of these countries, yet we persist with this discrimination. If there are approximately 1,600 adoptions per annum and the maximum payment from the Department of Social and Family Affairs is €172 per week, that amounts to €500,000 per year. There is no reason for this under the Unfair Dismissals Act or under the Adoptive Leave Act, yet it is included in the legislation. The only redeeming feature of the legislation is contained in section 3 which provides that the Minister may by order made with the consent of the Minister for Social and Family Affairs and the Minister for Finance extend the period of leave. Practically the same words are repeated in section 5 which provides for the adoptive father to receive the extended maternity leave in the event of anything happening to the adoptive mother. The Minister of State should give a commitment now rather than wait to have it changed at a later date. He should give a commitment in the House, or outside as usually happens these days, that he will extend the leave to 18 weeks for both natural and adoptive parents. Those adopting a child should receive more time off before the child is placed in the household because there are so many more difficulties.

The Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children, Deputy Brian Lenihan, is undertaking a wide-ranging review of the adoption laws and issues relating to adoption here. I hope he shows a more enlightened approach than that shown in this legislation.

Adoption has changed dramatically in recent years. Few adoptions come from within the country as the vast majority of single mothers keep their children. Therefore, many of those who require an adoption must go abroad to get that child. They adopt children from countries which, by their nature, are deprived. We are aware of issues regarding China, Vietnam, Romania and other eastern bloc countries. In the past, the issue of adoption was unregulated except that it could be treated almost like a commodities market. Wealthy western people with no children travelled to these countries to meet dubious state agencies for the purpose of adopting a child. This involved an enormous cost to the agency abroad as well as the costs incurred by the parents in numerous flights to and from these countries and having to remain there for a week or two, yet this is something we do not take into account. That still happens. They must spend a significant period in the adoptive country. All this should be taken into account in the Bill. Given that we are not giving these parents extra time to fly abroad, the least we could do is give adoptive parents the same rights as natural parents who are fortunate enough to have a child of their own to rear.

Changes in society mean that both parents work and deliberately decide to postpone having a family to an age where many mothers' fertility decreases quite dramatically. Fertility can drop by up to 50% to 60% from the age of 25 to 35. There will be many more couples who have postponed having a family and who will realise they have fertility problems, that IVF will not work and that the only way they can have a family is by adoption. Let us get rid of this discrimination from the beginning and let us hope when the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Lenihan, reviews the legislation, he will make it easier for parents to go abroad to adopt a child. They experience enough difficulties abroad without our stacking obstacles against them.

Most of the meetings with social workers who view the home are beneficial and are for the purpose of protecting the child. It is not that the State is interfering. The State is good in that respect in that it watches its duty to the child. We need to be more careful in putting through this legislation.

Adoption is a difficult and emotional subject. It was certainly an emotional subject from my point of view as a general practitioner when a husband and wife who were trying to adopt came to my surgery having failed to have a family. It is quite distressing for a husband and wife when they realise, having gone through all the tests and investigations, that they will not have a family of their own. Even at that stage, thousands of euro can be spent on expensive IVF treatments. When it comes to deciding to adopt a child abroad, they are in the dark concerning the problems they will incur before they can get that child home. I am in favour of much of what is set out in the Bill because it is for the protection of the child. While the child's circumstances and the country from which he or she comes may be disastrous — we all saw some of the children who came from orphanages in Romania — the conditions may not be much better in parts of China, and possibly Vietnam, although I do not wish to castigate these countries without having an enlightened child care policy. While the circumstances from which the child comes and goes to here are vastly different, we must look after those children.

Not all these are wealthy middle class parents with plenty of money to go abroad and adopt a child. Many who fail to have a family are not wealthy and do not have the money to throw around to adopt a child. We should examine ways to make life easier for these parents.

On the issue of maternity cover, 18 weeks' paid maternity leave is provided for plus an additional eight weeks without pay. This means a mother is entitled to a maximum of 26 weeks to bond with the child in any one year. Four weeks must be taken before the child is expected to be born and the remaining 22 weeks may be taken afterwards. There are major difficulties with a mother bonding with an adopted child. While the mother loves the child, there is an issue of bonding because the child is usually eight or nine months old. We should try to be more enlightened. There is no need to extend the paid maternity leave but there is a strong case to be made for it being more open-ended in respect of non-paid maternity leave. That incurs no cost to the State and so far as employers are concerned, they can recruit contract workers and need not concern themselves about employment law unless they must retain that person for longer than 12 months. If a husband and wife are fortunate enough to adopt a child from a foreign country such as Estonia, Latvia, some of the children may have been affected by the Chernobyl fallout, may have their own problems and may require a number of admissions to hospital or visits to a special unit until the problem is sorted. It would be good for us to be more understanding in this regard and perhaps make unpaid paternity leave more available to the parents involved.

I am sure the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform will liaise with the Departments of Health and Children and Enterprise, Trade and Employment on this issue. They should carefully examine how we treat parents, especially those who have adopted children from overseas, because there may be complications when the bond between the child and the adoptive mother is not as strong as that with the natural mother. Such parents need time and space to develop a relationship with their children. However, if they are stuck in a rut worrying about how many weeks they have left, we will cause problems for ourselves.

Why should mothers alone be so tied to the full 26 weeks of maternity leave? Some parents, including our own, returned to work much sooner than after 18 weeks because that was the nature of their lifestyles at the time. Even now there are many mothers who would like to return to the workforce earlier but do not do so because they must look after very young babies. It may also be the case that a mother is self-employed and her husband may be an employee. Although some may think that a mother giving her husband the opportunity to take her maternity leave is a means of exploiting the system, it is not necessarily the case.

Self-employed people have their own difficulties in trying to keep their businesses going because they do not have the protection of paid employment. Therefore, if a mother were self-employed and felt the need to go back to work to protect her livelihood and business which supports her family, why should her husband not be able to avail of her remaining maternity leave, whether that is three, four or six weeks? It is not paternity leave but rather a continuation of the maternity or adoptive leave of the other parent which can be used to continue looking after the child.

We have come a long way in that we now believe fathers as well as mothers can look after their children. To extend the provision of maternity leave beyond the mother alone would be a progression of that belief. There is no reason it could not be made available to the father, although not straight away since mothers would usually like to take a minimum amount of time with their children. However, now that extended maternity leave is available, the option should be made available to fathers. Some people have been critical of the amount of maternity leave granted in Ireland, but I hope we never end up like the United States where mothers enjoy just six weeks' paid leave. It is not as easy to get unpaid leave there as it is to get eight weeks' unpaid leave in Ireland.

This Bill is a tiny aspect of the review of the adoptive laws and child care Acts that the Minister of State with responsibility for children, Deputy Brian Lenihan, is working on but it offers the opportunity to examine the other issues I have outlined. We need to get rid of the discrimination. The 18 weeks' leave should be available to both parents. If anything, we should examine how adoptive parents can recover some of their costs if they have spent long periods abroad. Both parents should also have the opportunity to take up maternity leave cover. It need not necessarily be the mother.

I was surprised to learn of the 16 weeks versus 18 weeks figures. A constituent wrote to me about it and I thought it crazy at the time, especially so when one considers the amount of money involved. If the option is available to the Minister of State, he can make a statement that, along with the Ministers for Social and Family Affairs and Finance, both of whom should be easy to get through to on this issue, he will extend the period to 18 weeks for both parents. We can then plan on what we should do with the rest of the adoption laws.

See this speech in context