Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I move amendment No. 19:

In page 20, between lines 34 and 35, to insert the following:

"(2) Twelve months after the placement by an accredited body of a child for adoption with an adopter or adopters the agreement of the mother or guardian of the child to such placement shall be irrevocable.".

In the area of domestic adoption, of which there are far fewer instances now because of the numbers of adoptions that are, essentially, family adoptions of the type I described, there has been a considerable problem. There are cases where a mother has agreed to the placement of a child for adoption, the child is placed with prospective adopters at a very young age and starts to attach to the prospective adopters and becomes settled in their home and sometime after the placement the mother may change her mind.

I take the view that a mother must be given some opportunity to change her mind, having gone through the trauma of making decisions about giving up her child. The child may be given up by the mother who, within a few weeks, may regret deeply the decision she has made. Therefore, there must be some degree of flexibility.

However, if we are going to protect the welfare of children, children cannot become parcels transferred between natural mothers and prospective adopters. I have been aware of cases over the years, which, though a minority, where children have been placed for adoption for a number of months, the mother has changed her mind and the child comes back to the mother. The mother changed her mind again two or three months later and the child is again placed with the same adopters. We had a plethora of court cases running through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s -the numbers are fewer since 2000 - where this has given rise to a problem.

I make a declaration of interest in that, as a lawyer, I have represented in the courts natural mothers on occasions and, on others, adopters in cases of this nature. One of the difficulties mothers have on occasion when they place their children for adoption is that, having made the decision finally, the issue revisits and haunts them. They are asked over and over again whether they agree or consent. We need a procedure that brings a closure to the process that is in the best interests of children.

I go back to the report published in 1984 in which this issue was addressed. The issue of children and attachment has been addressed in a number of very learned books, starting from that published by Bowlby. We now know a great deal about attachments. When a young child aged two or three months, younger in some instances, has been placed with adopters, by the time the child reaches 12 or 13 months very serious attachments have developed. If the child is taken out of that environment, not only can it cause short-term detrimental implications for its development, but it can create major long-term problems in the capacity of that child when an adult to form attachments and maintain them. A great deal of study has been done in this area.

In a nutshell, I propose that where a child has been placed for adoption, 12 months after the placement - it has to be a minimum of 12 months after the mother has agreed to place - that agreement should become irrevocable. The mother cannot simply decide she has changed her mind. That is to preserve the integrity of the placement in the best interests of the child, in circumstances in which the child has clearly attached to the adopters. It also gives a reasonable timeline for the mother, having agreed to her child being placed for adoption, to consider whether she really wants that adoption to go ahead.

I do not believe this should be an open-ended procedure. On some occasions, for reasons to do with social workers falling ill or communication failures between adoption agencies and the Adoption Board, it has taken between one to three years from the time when the child was placed with adopters for the adoption to be finalised. That is not in the best interests of children.

The other amendments I tabled are related. The first amendment deals with the issue of the agreement to place a child for adoption. The others - perhaps the Acting Chairman will remind me of their numbers so that I can find them.

See this speech in context