Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

A national contact preference register was established in 2005 and this gives adopted children and natural parents an opportunity to put out feelers for contact. A court order is a dangerous precedent. There could be a frustrated father who objected to the placement or who challenged the consent being dispensed with in the High Court and who could be making applications for contact orders or applications as envisaged under amendment No. 44. This would cause upheaval for a child. As Senator Healy Eames said, it is already traumatic enough for a teenager. Many of them ask "Why me?" regardless of the difficulties associated with adoption and the greater problems associated with court applications in relation to contact that may not be welcome. That concern must be considered in this amendment.

There is a finality to Irish adoption. It would be a major change in policy to move towards the open adoption system. Section 58 of the Bill explains the position. It states:

Upon an adoption order being made, or the recognition under this Act of an intercountry adoption effected outside the State—

(a) the child concerned shall be considered, with regard to the rights and duties of parents and children in relation to each other, as the child of the adopters born to them in lawful wedlock...

Obviously consequential amendments would have to be made if we were to accept the amendments proposed. Apart from that, it is probably unconstitutional as well. On the example of the mother struggling with alcohol addiction, it was suggested that an adoption should be open so that the mother could have some contact, but fostering is supposed to, and does in most cases, deal with a situation where a mother, suffering from a temporary impairment, is not in a position to mind a child. Fostering allows contact in the normal way, with the opportunity, if the mother is able to restore herself to full capacity, to renew her relationship fully with the child.

We must stay within the parameters of full adoption. We must accept that we are setting minimum standards here. We have a full adoption system and I do not believe it is in the best interest of a child that an application could be made as envisaged here. The contact register is the appropriate way. There are other sections in the Bill which refer to the voice of the child being heard if he or she is over a certain age and where appropriate. That is safeguarded in the Bill also.