Mary White (Fianna Fail)

Our vision through this legislation should be to deliver a compassionate revision of the existing circumstances in which people who want to adopt children find themselves. It is cruel to prospective adoptive parents that they must hang on for between six and ten years for approval. This is totally unnecessary. I agree families must be scrutinised rigorously but if we can speed up the process through the enactment of this legislation, we will make a dramatic change in the lives of people who want to adopt children.

Senators Fitzgerald and Healy Eames mentioned the Monageer report. I have some sympathy with the argument about the lack of resources in the HSE but why were 27 pages of the report blacked out and seven recommendations left out? This is not only about lack of resources and one must read between the blacked out lines. The HSE has buckets of money with an annual budget of €14.5 billion and 111,000 staff. We are making great progress in improvements in the HSE but it needs to prioritise radically where it is spending its money and what are the areas of greatest need.

As I said to the Minister of State in another arena yesterday, the primary recommendation in the Monageer report is the provision of a 24 hours a day, seven days a week social work service.