Ivana Bacik (Independent)

I join with others in welcoming everyone back after the break and wishing colleagues a happy new year and a busy and productive session ahead.

I mention the untimely deaths of two very noted and respected journalists, Caroline Walsh of The Irish Times, and Mary Raftery, whose brave investigative work for RTE, and "Prime Time" in particular, exposed some shameful abuses of individuals, children and those with psychiatric illness in the past. They are sad losses to note over the period.

I welcome the new Jobs initiative announced today led by nine different Departments. It is vitally important that such initiatives are established, particularly given the news over the break of the difficulties experienced by workers who have lost their jobs in companies like Vita Cortex in Cork and La Senza at various locations around Dublin where workers were told of the loss of their jobs at outrageously short notice and are still owed back pay by companies which in other aspects are still trading. It is an issue we need to debate. The Leader has announced the debate tomorrow on the report on small business, which was sought at the end of the last session, and we will have other debates also on jobs initiatives over the coming weeks. I very much welcome these debates because we must be creative in our thinking about job creation and trying to stem the rises in unemployment.

As part of the debate on children's rights I ask that we also incorporate a debate on adoption. The Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald, is in Vietnam this week and I very much welcome the announcement that she is there to seek to conduct the bilateral agreement with Vietnam necessary for adoptions to continue from that country. We had an excellent debate in the previous session of this Seanad on the Adoption Bill which came into force at the end of last year but huge concerns remain. Many of us will have heard from individuals who have friends or family who are very concerned about the issue of adoption and the way adoption law is now operating under the new and much more child friendly regime established by the Adoption Act. It would be useful, given that the Minister will attend the House to debate children's rights, to also have her deal with the issue of adoption, particularly when she returns from Vietnam.