Frances Fitzgerald (Fine Gael)

There are a couple of points I want to make about bilateral adoption. More than 4,000 foreign adoptions have been registered in the Republic since 1991. Some 400 of those children are adopted from Russia, China and Vietnam. I do not have time to go into all of the details but the Minister of State will be familiar with them. There is a problem that Ireland does not have bilateral agreements with some of the countries such as Russia and Vietnam — there is an agreement with Vietnam but it expires in April. I expected to hear an update in the Minister of State's speech. I ask him to bring us up to date on what is happening with the bilateral agreements so parents who have adopted from these countries, and especially those who are in the process of adopting, will know what is going to happen when the Adoption Bill comes into force.

The Minister of State will be familiar with the concept of the grandfather clause, which is not contained in the Bill. If a family has adopted a child from Russia already, such a clause would enable them to adopt a second child. Even though it is not covered by the Hague Convention, I ask that the Minister of State have a grandfather clause inserted in the legislation to allow this to happen. This ought to be examined.

I want to mention one other important area, namely, the changing face of adoption, which is not addressed in this Bill. There is now much more open adoption in most countries. I am familiar with that from working on adoption issues in Ireland. Here we are moving more towards an open adoption situation as well, where a good deal of information is given to the adoptive parents and the adopted child. Very often there is ongoing contact with the natural parent. This legislation does not reflect the growing number of open adoptions occurring in this country, under which birth parents reach a legal agreement that provides them with some access, visiting rights etc. to the child. It must be asked why the Bill is not addressing this issue because we need a legal framework to deal with this new situation of more open adoptions. Perhaps it is in the detail of the Bill and I have missed it. If so, perhaps the Minister of State will inform me and I shall be delighted. However, it seems that this area is not adequately covered in the Bill.

A number of particular domestic issues are not addressed either. For instance, a case in which a couple marries, the woman already has a baby and the marital father wants to adopt is a very complicated area. In Ireland, the mother, in effect, ends up adopting her own child, and a couple must address highly complicated legal procedure in order for the husband to adopt. This is a case where the natural father is not on the scene at all, and the legislation does not deal with that.

I welcome the Bill since it incorporates the very important provisions of the Hague Convention, 16 years later. There are a number of issues, however, where it should go further and it avoids some key issues that are relevant to the current adoption debate and the way adoption has changed. In conclusion, I welcome the attempts to provide a secure service for inter-country adoptions. Legislation, as the Minister of State knows, is only one element, however. The other elements are implementation, the resourcing of social services to deal with it, international co-operation and post-adoption services. I should like to see a commitment to all of those levels as well because we need to protect children in this situation. I welcome the fact so many children are being given a secure future by increasing the standards in relation to inter-country adoption.