Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

One of criteria regarding eligibility for adoption is that the person to be adopted must be under 18 years of age. The issue of the adoption of persons aged over 18 years of age originally arose in the context of children who remain in long-term foster care, as the Deputy has said, with the same family for a considerable period of time but who, for one reason or another, are not eligible to be adopted. As the Deputy will know, the Childcare (Amendment) Act 2007 provides additional rights to parents who foster on a long-term basis. The referendum wording, as proposed and agreed unanimously by the Joint Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children, will allow liberalisation of the kind of restrictions which are causing people to be in foster care for long periods of time when adoption might be a more appropriate answer for them. For that reason, I will not accept the amendment. It would be more appropriate to deal with it in the context of the referendum proposal which will be put before the people in due course.

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