Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

While I understand that the Minister is reading himself into his brief, the response he has given me is lukewarm and less firm in its commitment than that of his predecessor, who said:

As the Deputy indicated, those anomalies include the requirement - as part of step-parent adoption - for a natural parent to adopt his or her own child, including compliance with the requirements associated with the adoption process. In other words and as the Deputy highlighted, such parents must undergo the adoption procedure as if the child were a stranger to them. It is almost like starting out afresh. A further anomaly relates to the creation of a wholly new birth certificate recognising the newly-adoptive parents and possibly removing the recognition of a birth parent, very often the father.

Nobody could have put it better. That is absolutely unacceptable, and I hope the Minister, Deputy Flanagan, will endorse her further comments:

I am of the view that the law must be changed in order that birth parents will no longer be obliged to adopt their own children in order to facilitate adoption by step-parents. It is not appropriate that we continue to subject birth parents to outdated legal conventions when it comes to step-parent adoption.

She went on to say that this would happen towards the end of 2013 or in the parentage Bill to be introduced early in 2014. It is not enough for those parents who are waiting in limbo to be told that this will happen at some stage under what the Minister calls a review. I ask him to give us some sort of guarantee that this will be done within a timeframe that will give relief to those parents - mothers in particular - who feel utterly humiliated at the procedure that requires them going through an absurdity of adopting their own children.

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