Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There are a couple of key areas in the Adoption (Information and Tracing) Bill that deal with trying to make our law regarding contact and protection of rights between the adoptee and the birth parents as open as possible. We continue to work on a couple of challenging areas, although we may have progressed them as far as is possible without meeting the barrier of constitutional requirements.

That is the first point. I hope it is clear enough.

I wish to comment on another issue relating to the Adoption (Amendment) Act raised by the Deputy. There is an outstanding issue, not relating to that Act but to the Children and Family Relationships Act. A section in the latter needs to be commenced in order to allow for both members of a same-sex partnership to be registered as parents of their child. That is being worked on in the Department of Health as we speak. The Minister for Health hopes to be in a position to lay the order before the Houses as early as possible this year. That remains outstanding. It relates to what we were doing with the Adoption (Amendment) Act but the provisions are in the Child and Family Relationships Act.

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