Ms Catherine McGuinness:

Perhaps rather than putting these families into these types of curiously institutional system, they could be housed in the many apartments and so on in NAMA ownership. This would allow them to live more naturally. There are not now as many asylum seekers as there were at the time direct provision was established. Some thought should be given to placing these families in the type of housing in which the mothers can at least cook food and so on for their children, and which might also provide them with an opportunity to work. They could then support themselves. It is not impossible to put in place a system that allows asylum seekers to work. That is as much as I can say on that matter.

Senator van Turnhout raised the complex issue of children being put on remand. In principle, the Senator is right that children should not be sent into remand, which means they are held in custody while awaiting assessment. That is not supposed to happen. The constitutional right to bail applies to children at least as much as, or indeed more than it does to adults. Adults are only refused bail for clear reasons which do not include awaiting assessment. Although from time to time people who are in custody are assessed, and there is nothing wrong with that, to have them taken into custody purely for assessment seems to be wrong, particularly for children. The trouble is that children, when given bail, are given a date for reappearance in court and because they are children they may not be good at reappearing in court on the right day or time. The vast majority of these children come from families that are not organised and are, perhaps, socially deprived and poor. Their parents may be drug addicts and so on, so that they do not have the type of support that ensures they turn up at the right time in court and that they do all the right things such as signing on at the right time at the local Garda station. If the person given bail is a member of the board of Anglo Irish Bank and is required to sign on at Irishtown Garda station at a particular time he or she will do so, but a kid from the inner city may forget do to so. We need to find some way of supporting these children, perhaps through the probation service.

I am aware of Senator van Turnhout's interesting piece of research into this area, which she kindly gave me to read in advance and was of great help in terms of her having raised this rather complicated issue today. I agree that these children need support. There is also a need for a speedier court system so that there is no necessity for long periods of remand. The problem may be caused by a lack of judges or inefficiencies in the system, but whatever the cause, the system needs to be quicker.

Senator Quinn raised the issue of foreign adoptions and the difficulties that have arisen in this regard. This is the other side of the coin. Historically, during the early period of the Irish State, prior to the enactment of the Adoption Act 1952, there were undoubtedly a large number of illegal adoptions. There was no such thing at that time as legal adoption. Many children were adopted by people in America. We were giving our children to richer people in America who had no children of their own and desperately wanted to adopt children. To be fair, many of them were in much the same position as are many Irish people who are now trying to adopt children in Russia. During the 1970s, when I served on the Adoption Board, the situation of Irish girls giving up their babies under all the pressures I mentioned earlier still prevailed. Leaving aside the rights of those girls, their babies were being adopted in a well organised way by Irish families. Many of those adopted went to happy homes. I frequently meet people in the street who come up to me and say, "By the way, do you know you were on the Adoption Board when our child was adopted?". The person then goes on to tell me all about the successes the child has had, which is wonderful.

Adoption is a huge issue. Irish people are now the rich and the ones looking to adopt. It is the other side of the coin. It is a difficult situation. I hope we can work through it and improve the system so that there is not such a great deal of difficulty in it. I congratulate Senators on their interests in the area of children and, in particular, direct provision. Senator Reilly also spoke about children born into direct provision and the lack of areas in which they can play, which is an issue also brought to my attention by Fergus Finlay of Barnardos, who had visited one of these hostels in an area in Athlone. He told me that next door to the hostel there was a huge children's playground which contained all sorts of play equipment, but the asylum seekers' children were not allowed to play in it.