Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

The position in regard to Vietnam is that the agreement expires on 1 May. The Government decided in December that we would pursue a new agreement which would be improved and based more rigorously on the principles contained in the Hague Convention. The drafting of that agreement was not a simple affair. We went through some of the details of that on the last occasion in the House. Nevertheless, we sent a draft of an agreement to the Vietnamese authorities and we intend to go to Vietnam in the next few days or weeks to sign an agreement. That is our intention, but as I said the last day, we cannot anticipate what the Vietnamese authorities will say about the draft agreement we sent them. That is the state of play.

I am keen to keep the parents informed. Members of the Oireachtas are getting a lot of representations from anxious parents and anxious prospective adoptive parents in regard to where we are going with this. I reassure people that we are very keen to sign an agreement and we will be guided at all times by the protection of children, both in Vietnam and here. They are the guiding and central principles in terms of how we approach this.

We have put a lot of time and resources into this to get this far. There have been some comments in the media that we have been dragging our heels and that we are somehow or other not interested in doing this, but nothing could be further from the truth.

I oppose the amendment. The experience I have had in the past few months in trying to negotiate bilateral agreements, agreements between two sovereign states, is that very often other sovereign states look at what is going on and many non-governmental organisations take a great deal of interest in it. It is not something that happens in isolation. There is little to be gained by placing before the Houses of the Oireachtas one's opening position or bottom line or negotiating information which might be better not put on the public record thereby preserving for oneself a strong negotiating position. I would be inclined not to do that.

The motivation behind the amendment is right. It is to try to ensure that these things are done in a timely fashion. However, that cannot be guaranteed by such a provision. The key is transparency. We will lay any new agreement before the Houses of the Oireachtas where it can be duly debated. However, it is important that my office and the Department of Foreign Affairs are given the right to negotiate this agreement in the normal way in which international agreements are concluded. The provisions in the Bill in regard to the laying of agreements before both Houses of the Oireachtas are adequate so I do not believe the amendment is necessary.