Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I am pleased to address this matter, having given it serious consideration in the course of my work on the Bill. This issue has been use to characterise me as not having guts. Every Deputy in the House has beaten a path to my door to raise the issue of inter-country adoption and allowing adoptions from Vietnam to proceed in the face of evidence that it would not be in the best interests of children to do so. Despite complaints from constituents, I took a child centred decision to suspend the operation of an agreement about which a doubt had arisen. Some of the same Deputies are now arguing in this Chamber that the issue must be considered from the other side.

There are two dimensions to this issue. In the past, our actions were governed by the stigma associated with births outside marriage and single parenthood. Having moved on from that position, we must reflect this in legislation and I have given a commitment to do so to the best extent possible.

I reject the view that the Government has not done anything since 2003. While I do not recall the precise circumstances, a Bill introduced in 2003 was rejected out of hand by all interests in this area because it proposed to criminalise anyone who sought to breach privacy in circumstances in which a natural parent did not wish to be contacted. Since then the national contact preference register has been established. Fewer than 10,000 people have applied to the register. While Deputy Burton described the register as next to useless, I am informed that the rate of matches is not dissimilar to the rates one finds in other jurisdictions, although I stand open to correction on that.

In 2007, a framework was established for the national information and tracing service. The framework was piloted throughout 2008 and as recently as last year, information about how it was working was still being gleaned. If we are to move to statutory provision in this area, surely we must have proper information about how the contact register and information and tracing service are working with respect to all the agencies that are supposed to take advantage of it in dealing with applications for tracing. As recently as last year, studies on the service were being completed but we have the information we need at this point.

One area about which we need a little more information - I referred to this matter in committee - is tracing in the context of inter-country adoption. The first inter-country adoptions were from Romania. Many of the children adopted at that time are coming of age and are interested in tracing.

We cannot ignore the 1998 Supreme Court judgment to which Deputy Shatter referred. The judgment sought to balance the right to privacy against the right of an individual to know who his or her parents were. I remember one of the judges stated that there could not be a clearer example of a case on which the right to privacy had to be adjudicated and balanced against other rights, in this case the right of a person to know his or her natural parent. The case in question was a non-1952 adoption, an illegal adoption if one likes, and the Supreme Court ruled that the right to privacy had to be protected. In the opinion of most commentators, a 1952 type adoption would attract even greater protection because such adoptions were completed in the manner in which we have understood adoption in this country for many years, namely, as clean break adoptions.

A comparison has been made with the United Kingdom. As Deputy Shatter noted, the UK does not share our tradition of clean break adoption and has always considered adoption in a different light. As far back as 1975, the UK Children Act allowed for contact orders in relation to natural parents. This provided for an open adoption situation, which could be preordained and governed by counselling in advance in order that applicants understood the consequences of meeting natural parents before a contact order could be made. The difference between Ireland and the United Kingdom is that we never had an open adoption system. The Supreme Court has given its judgment on how it balances constitutional rights in this area and we must respect its ruling. We cannot legislate outside the Constitution. The parameters have been set down by judges of the Supreme Court in this case.

Deputy Burton is concerned that legislation will not start. As I indicated, legislation was proposed in this area but rejected, although I am not familiar with the precise circumstances.

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