Frances Fitzgerald (Fine Gael)

I second the amendment. I expect the Minister of State will take the opportunity to put on the record of this House what he told The Irish Times. The report by Carol Coulter is very good and I have no problem with it. However, I have difficulty with the fact that the Minister of State was asked in the House on quite a number of occasions whether there were particular difficulties. The Seanad, I believe, took it in good faith that he was trying to resolve particular difficulties, as I still do. None the less, there are details in The Irish Times article that he did not put before this House when we were discussing this issue. He did not confirm that national oversight in Vietnam was one of his concerns. He did raise the issue of the level of fees paid by parents and where these went. It is said in The Irish Times the Minister of State would like a closer relationship with the Helping Hands Adoption and Mediation Agency. I am concerned prospective parents have read about these issues today, and yet the Seanad did not have the opportunity of having a reasonable and detailed discussion about these three issues because the Minister of State did not outline them as being among the difficulties he was having in concluding the agreement with Vietnam.

Given that we have spent quite a number of days discussing the Adoption Bill in the House, I believe the Minister of State should have outlined those difficulties. We should have had an opportunity to hear his concerns, as should the prospective parents, so that we might have teased out some of these issues and perhaps made some suggestions. At least we should have been told that these were the barriers against the Minister of State concluding the agreement. Everyone involved is very concerned about this and wants what Senators Norris and Bacik have in this amendment, namely, the best interests of the child as the first and paramount consideration. I shall speak in a moment about the fact that we have not had the amendment to the Constitution on the protection of children's rights. If that amendment were in place I believe that in some respects we would be having a very different type of Adoption Bill. Several of the provisions would be different, as the Minister of State has allowed, and I regret that the amendment is not in place prior to our discussion of this Adoption Bill.

I want to point out the type of things parents are saying and I again ask the Minister of State to clarify the situation. Perhaps it was not this Minister of State but rather previous incumbents who were negligent in looking at these agreements. If it has taken so long to get clarity on the Vietnam bilateral agreement, what will happen, for example, to the bilateral agreements with Ethiopia and Russia? Fine Gael gave the Minister of State an opportunity in an amendment, rejected on Committee Stage and which he might re-examine on Committee Stage in the Dáil, to be able to place a report before the Houses of the Oireachtas saying whether it was intended to conclude a particular bilateral agreement, the stage the negotiations were at and highlighting any difficulties. That would have provided an opportunity to bring such matters to the attention of the Houses, alert Departments as to what needed to be done and the timeframe that would have been necessary.

This is all concerned with the best interests of the child, which is a key point in this amendment. A letter in The Irish Times from parents shows the types of questions they are asking:

We have all known for the past five years the agreement would run out on May 1st, 2009. Why was the draft bilateral, promised to the Vietnamese, only sent to them on March 6th 2009? Why was a delegation, and not Mr. Andrews, himself, only sent to Vietnam in the week beginning April 20th 2008, just a week and a half before the deadline? This is outrageous and this issue now needs to be addressed by the Government.

I will not quote the whole letter but it goes on to outline the impact this has had. It may well be since the Minister of State has taken over this brief that he has highlighted this and that the resources of the Department are totally engaged in this respect. I do not doubt for a minute the good intentions of the officials involved and the hard work they put in, but there are serious questions about whether an adequate timeframe was put in place before the deadline had expired to deal with the issues the Minister of State outlined to The Irish Times today and which he did not outline to this House. He took the opportunity to make a statement last week and I ask him to do the same today giving the same detail that was given in The Irish Times article and of which we were not made aware during our detailed discussions in the House. Can these issues be resolved? The current lack of clarity leaves parents distressed and concerned whether they will be taken out of this limbo. Given what has happened in recent weeks and whatever negotiations are taking place, can we expect more clarity? When will the Minister of State go to Vietnam? How does he plan to deal with this issue?