Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I wish to share my time with Deputies John O'Mahony and Peter Fitzpatrick. The journalist Olivia O'Leary wrote a very moving column the other day describing how as a young reporter she had once written a series on adoption for The Irish Times. She rang a nun, an admirable woman, who was in charge of an orphanage for girls in Dublin. She told Ms O'Leary how sometimes in the middle of the night, a youngster would wake up and cry out for her mother. Within minutes, she said, the whole dormitory would be awake, all crying out for their mothers, mothers they had never known and could have had no memory of.

It is an image which Olivia O'Leary says has always haunted her, of children crying out in the night for their dream of a mother. It is an image that haunts me too. It was a mother they would never have - in some cases because they were at an age when adoption was now unlikely to happen, but in many cases because they were the children of legally married parents and could not be adopted. I agree with Olivia O'Leary that it is extraordinary that we should have created a legal limbo in which children whose parents could not look after them because of drink or drugs or mental illness or other problems, should be forever denied the love of a mother and father and family. It seems extraordinary to me that this limbo still exists. The reason is that our Constitution protects the rights of legally married parents but makes no reference to the individual rights of a child.

As an adopted person myself, I can identify strongly with those children crying out for their mothers. I understand the longing that children feel to have a mother, a father, a family unit, whether by birth or by adoption. As Minister for Social Protection, I have committed to introducing legal measures that give children their rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which include the right to have information on their birth parents. I am planning to legislate to allow for the inclusion of the name of the father on a child's birth certificate.

I propose to seek Government approval to publish the heads of a civil registration Bill soon. This will provide further amendments to the Civil Registration Act 2004 relating to the registration of births and deaths; the validation of marriages at embassies and civil partnerships; to prevent marriages of convenience and to make a number of other amendments. The Bill will implement recommendations of the Law Reform Commission in its report on legal aspects of family relationships, in particular, that there should be compulsory registration of fathers of children in the case of non-marital births. This obligation will be modified by the right of the mother not to register the father's particulars where she fears for her safety or that of her child; a proposal to allow a mother to effect registration on foot of a statutory declaration that her legal spouse is not the father of her child, thereby making it easier to rebut the legal presumption of paternity where a woman's husband, who is not the father of her child, is unco-operative or cannot be contacted.

I have heard various radio discussions where parents expressed the fear of the knock on the door from the social worker who would wish to take their child away from them. That is emphatically not what the referendum is about. It is, however, a fear that I understand, given this country's complex history of the wielding of institutional power since the Famine. There is a collective long-term memory of the institutionalisation of children, and the fears arising out of that experience must be respected. As a person who had the good fortune to be adopted into a very loving family, I would wish that option to be made available to children in care whose birth parents are unable to fulfil that role. As I said, I understand the fears regarding social workers. As a child, I was rather thin and weak looking. My mother and her friends in the neighbourhood always had a fear that if I did not eat enough, I would be taken away. Looking at me now, colleagues may find that interesting. There was a genuine fear of the very powerful institutions and authority figures in Irish life, including the church, local people in authority, the "cruelty man", people from various charitable organisations and members of the judicial system who had the power to put children into institutions for long periods. That folk memory remains.

It is important, therefore, to reiterate, as the Minister has set out very clearly, that the proposed amendment encompasses an appropriate proportionality in regard to the powers of the State to intervene in family life. Everybody will agree that the best place for a child is with his or her parents. Where that is not possible, however, this proposal seeks to give children in institutional care a second chance to have a loving family. That is the issue on which we must focus. We are all aware of situations where it would be most desirable for a long-term fostering arrangement to progress to an adoption relationship, where that is the wish of both foster parents and foster child. Unfortunately, that is very difficult to achieve under the current legislative and constitutional position. Even where a child is with his or her foster parents from babyhood or very shortly after, the consent of a social worker is still required in respect of a range of common activities which other parents take for granted, including quite straightforward matters such as trips abroad. The constitutional amendment we are proposing has a very particular purpose in regard to the position of children in long-term foster care whose married parents are unavailable to care for them or who wish to allow them to go forward for adoption.

The referendum proposes a major and historic change to the Constitution which seeks to protect children, support families and ensure all children receive equal treatment. It is nearly 20 years since Mrs. Justice Catherine McGuinness, who has since retired, called for constitutional change of this kind. She made that call in the wake of a case where a father had persistently raped and abused his daughter over a 15-year period. Since then, we have had a range of reports - 17 in total - detailing abuses of Irish children within the family setting, the environment in which a child should be safest. In some cases, unfortunately, it was the place of greatest danger for the children concerned. Now, after all of those horrific reports on a series of child protection failings in Ireland, this Government is taking action.

The proposal before us today seeks to benefit all children but particularly those who are most vulnerable and most at risk. The vast majority of children live in loving, caring families and never require the assistance of the State's child protection and welfare services. Unfortunately, however, that is not universally the case. Some families require help and support in parenting their children. In some cases, this might involve addiction and mental health support and family and individual counselling. The provisions contained in the amendment will support that. It also provides that in the most serious cases, children may be moved from the family and cared for by people other than their parents. More than 85% of non-voluntary admissions of children to care in 2011 were due to abuse, neglect and serious family problems. In the case of children, love is key and comes far above material considerations. This constitutional amendment seeks to afford certain children a second chance to have that experience of love and cherishing. As such, I commend it to the House and to the electorate.

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