Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, to the House, and commend her on introducing this Bill. As the Minister and others have said, it is a narrowly focused Bill with a specific purpose, which is amending a provision of the Adoption Act 2010.

However, as Senator van Turnhout and others have said, it raises much bigger issues surrounding adoption. This is a very difficult issue and one on which we have had a very difficult past. When the Adoption Bill was being debated in this Chamber, both the Minister and I were very involved in that debate as Opposition Senators. At that point we discussed some of these bigger issues that are quite correctly being raised now. Even then, there were concerns about what would happen to families who were in the process of adopting from non-Hague Convention countries, and section 63 was the interim or transitional provision. It is welcome that we can facilitate the very small number of families who are at a very advanced stage of the process through this legislation.

It is tightly drawn legislation. The two specific restrictions in it are welcome. I agree with the Minister's approach to confine the measure. It only applies to those families where a declaration of eligibility and suitability was already in force on 31 October this year, and it is further restricted in that it will only extend those declarations for one further year. That is very welcome for the 23 families involved.

The Tánaiste has been intensely involved in this, as has the Irish diplomatic service and the ambassador in Moscow. As the Minister said, this is due to changes in Russian adoption legislation. Those changes reflect overall changes in adoption patterns worldwide. As Russia and other countries become more wealthy and put more supports in place, there is a greater move towards adoptions within those countries and smaller numbers of adoptions as women have more choice and can keep their babies. As we know from our sad history, it is in the best interests of the child when there are supports available to families so they can keep the baby. In a relatively short period Ireland has moved from being a country where there were no supports and where children were in institutional care, with terribly sad cases such as that featured in the "Philomena" film regularly occurring, to being a country whose people are now adopting from abroad, from countries where vulnerable families are open to exploitation. The Minister and other Senators mentioned Ethiopia, Haiti and other countries where there would be concerns about families being put under pressure to put children up for adoption. The best interests of the child and child protection must of course be our foremost concern. All of us recall the high profile case of the Irish family which engaged in an inter-country adoption which did not go well. There was a very unfortunate outcome for the child. We must be conscious of that.

I am proud that we have signed and ratified the Hague Convention and that we adhere to its standards, which are clearly developed in the best interests of the child. Senator van Turnhout is correct that we must consider the rights of adopted children into the future and the right to information and tracing. The Minister and the Department are doing a great deal of work on that. Work has begun on bringing the records together to ensure that when the children are adults they will be entitled to the information. Indeed, it is important to point out that those families that have adopted children from Russia and elsewhere are far more conscious now of cultural sensitivities and the need for the child to be aware of their background. There is a Russian adoption society and the families regularly bring children to Russia. Generally, there is essentially a much greater move towards what Senator van Turnhout speaks of as open adoption.

It is also important to refer to other changes in families in terms of family structure and family formation and the way people now deal with difficulties with reproduction, for example, through surrogacy. There is a growing need to regulate surrogacy and I am glad the Government is going to move on that and to regulate assisted human reproduction generally. That is now what many families will look to, whereas in the past they might have adopted when it was easier to adopt and when, perhaps, the rights of the child were not as clearly protected in international law.

All of these developments are generally positive. We are much more sensitive to the best interests of the child and more conscious that the rights of the child are to the forefront. As Senator White and others have said, this is not about the right of parents to adopt. It must never be seen in that light. This is about the right of a child to a second chance and the need to ensure that children's rights are protected. The children who have been in institutional care in Russia - under the new change children must be in institutional care for a year before they may be eligible for inter-country adoption - deserve a second chance and many families in Ireland are very happy and keen to offer them that chance.

This is welcome legislation. It is narrowly focused and, for many of us, it raises much bigger and more fundamental questions. In the past I have represented many survivors of institutional abuse in Ireland and I am aware of the ongoing trauma into adulthood that comes from being taken from the birth family and being placed in institutional care at a time when there were no supports available from the State to facilitate birth families keeping their children. We have moved very rapidly from that system to a system where, happily, we are far more supportive of single parents. As a result, the rate of internal adoption has dropped to almost nothing. That is the bigger context in which this legislation is being introduced.

This is very welcome for the families involved. It is a nice Christmas present for them and particularly for the children who are deserving of the second chance.