Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Senator David Norris asked a very important question which I am happy to answer. Adoptive benefit is a very small scheme simply because the number of children adopted in this country is very small. It is a weekly payment made to an adopting employed or self-employed mother or single male who adopts a child and who meets the PRSI condition. That is set out in the primary legislation. I personally know a number of single people, both men and women, who have adopted children and been eligible for adoptive benefit since the time in the early 1990s when that developed as a practice.

Senators van Turnhout and Norris raised the surrogacy issue. The Minister for Justice and Equality brought a working paper before the Cabinet yesterday on legislative changes which will be made in respect of families and children. Medical technology is advancing in respect of surrogacy and various forms of assisted reproduction, and the law in Ireland needs to change. The Government is committed to making those changes. The Government agreed yesterday to put to the people a referendum on same-sex marriage. In that context, it will be necessary to introduce certain legal changes on adoption provisions as they affect same-sex couples. That legislation will be brought forward in due course by the Minister. There are difficult issues in respect of surrogacy because poor women in certain countries are being used in surrogacy arrangements. That issue must be addressed. The arrangement raised by Senator van Turnhout is quite different to that. The Department inherited that case from the previous Administration, but with the addressing of surrogacy issues in the proposed legislation, I would hope that we will be able to come to an arrangement for that case. However, there are still important issues with some surrogacy practices in some countries that we need to address.