Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

As Deputy Catherine Connolly pointed out, section 23 addresses the specifics of the issue. It provides a timeline of 36 months in which the State can make an adjudication that parents have neglected or failed their children. If I understand the Bill correctly, the child may have been fostered for 18 months of this 36 month period. Potentially, this means that he or she may have been with his or her parents for only 18 months and the State could decide, based on that period, that the parents had failed him or her. Let us take the example of a person who has experienced a mental breakdown because he or she went through a particularly bad period such as being homeless. As Deputies are aware, homelessness can last for years and in many cases those affected have no idea where they will live. This can have serious psychological effects and impact in many ways on their capacity to look after their children. Are adequate safeguards in place to address such circumstances? This issue must be given serious consideration.

Mental health problems and homelessness are frequently not fixed. A person who goes through a bad period may come out the other side as a different person and may be in a position to look after his or her children. Perhaps the parent secured a home and his or her mental health improved as a result. A person with drug or other addiction problems who is housed will be in a better position to obtain treatment, achieve rehabilitation and so forth. However, an adoption may already have taken place. In such circumstances, the State, the judge who made the ruling and the foster parents who subsequently adopted the child may have been acting in good faith and trying to do the right thing by the child. However, the circumstances will have changed. We need to consider complexities such as these, particularly where the children are very young because adoption may appear to them to be the best possible option. For example, a young child who is homeless may believe the best possible option is to tell a judge that he or sh e wishes to go somewhere where he or she will have a roof over his or her head and a proposed adoption is, therefore, okay. However, the child may feel differently a few years later, at which point the legal relationship with the parents will have changed. We must take these factors seriously.

As the next issue I propose to raise genuinely goes beyond the scope of the Bill, I will make only a passing reference to it. In parallel with implementing this legislation, steps must be taken to fully implement the Children First guidelines to ensure the State will provide all necessary supports to prevent family breakdown in the first instance. The provisions of the Bill should then apply at the point where family breakdown, neglect or abuse means the position is irretrievable, nothing can be done and adoption is the best way forward.

Serious, difficult and sensitive issues arise. Deputy Joan Burton spoke about the adoption triangle and there is a complicated triangle at work. I am not sure if the Deputy has seen the Ken Loach film, "Ladybird Ladybird", which is about a poor and deprived young woman who is experiencing problems and has several children taken from her. It is an appalling case, but the film is certainly worth watching. It provides a particular take on these cases and highlights some of the points I have made, for example, the belief on the part of the State that it is acting in the best interests of the child when that is not necessarily the case. It also leaves open the question as to who is monitoring or overseeing the State to make sure it is not guilty of neglect and abuse. As Deputies are aware from our history, both recent and further back, the State failed miserably in many cases and cannot be trusted to be the best body or institution to protect the interests of children, unless considerable safeguards are first put in place.

I say all of this in the genuine belief the objectives of the Bill and most of the measures provided for in it are absolutely correct. However, we need to think carefully about the issues I have raised. I am not sure how one would amend the provisions, but one possible change the Minister should consider is to the timeline provided for in section 23. There is a legal quagmire in respect of what should be done once a legal adoption has occurred and an adopted child decides he or she does not want to be adopted and may wish to reverse it. What right does the child have to a legal relationship with his or her birth parents?

He or she still has a right to trace his or her parents, but what if he or she wants a legal relationship with his or her parents because he or she now feels the position has changed? These are serious considerations.

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