Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I sometimes wonder how any of these things would work in practice. I know that would-be adopters of foreign children make considerable sacrifices, sometimes unsuccessfully, to go to places and return with nothing or return with arrangements which have fallen through or whatever. I do not underestimate the sacrifices they make and I salute them. However, I am not dealing here with a clause of the social welfare legislation to create a new allowance for would-be adopters equivalent to a kind of pre-maternity allowance for a natural couple. This amendment proposes to make it part of the contract of employment that the employer must pay the wages of employees if they travel abroad for periods of time which could be weeks on a number of occasions and employ someone to stand in for them. That is a serious issue from the point of view of an employer.

I throw into the equation, if I may, that this would apply to reasonably well-to-do people on reasonable salaries. An individual who was making his or her way as, for instance, a self-employed painter, would have none of this. The Exchequer would say, "We do not do that kind of thing; we only do it for employees and we are only concerned with making employers liable. We do not give any help ourselves to people who are either out of employment, on the one hand, or alternatively, self-employed on the other." We should remember the realities.

I agree that self-employed people have some advantages in the way things are in this country but one of the disadvantages is that if they decide to go to India to adopt a child, not merely in many cases is it entirely at their own expense, but it is at grave risk to the viability of their business and the like. Likewise, for people who are not in employment, this provision would be of no assistance to them. An unemployed couple who want to adopt a child would be in the worst of all positions because they would be given no assistance from the State and see better-off people having as an incident of their employment a significant subsidy to go abroad on visits preparatory to adoption.

This is a case of a bridge too far. It may well be, as Senator Terry hints, that in ten years' time, someone will read my speech and say this was a little flint-hearted and flint-faced of me. However, I am here in my own time, talking about my own time and talking about employers and employees of my own time.