Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

I am happy to support the amendment. To be fair to current practice, social workers do try to establish medical history and while it has not been my experience in this country that they have supplied medical records of biological parents, they have certainly established medical history in anecdotal form. However, in the case of foreign adoption, I have, in my own case, been provided with medical records, which is very useful. Every family has a medical history. A child's uncles and grandparents may have had a long line of heart disease, for example. Prevention is better than cure and a parent can adapt a lifestyle around that.

This is a very useful amendment. Senator Quinn has wisely inserted the words "where possible" because, of course, we do not want to slow down an adoption process or make it impossible to go ahead with it because the biological records of parents are not available. It is useful and I am keen to hear the Minister of State's response.