Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I second the amendment.

This echoes everything I have said on Second and Committee Stages, that is, the right a child has to its mother and father. I have quoted various people on that issue. What prompted me to table amendment No. 94 is that it is well recognised, even though the Minister is inclined to deny it, that a child does have a right - we talk about rights of identity but it is more than identity - to either their own biological mother and father or, where that is not possible as in the case of adoption, that we replicate that with what they would have aspired to, other than for some reason it was not possible. I fully accept that sometimes it is difficult for, say, a single mother to place a child for adoption and that there may be reasons behind that which we must fully respect. Very few mothers would do that lightly. As we have seen, many mothers subsequently have come back many decades later to try to make contact with their natural child and the State has been very facilitating and very critical of the fact that in the past provision was not made for those ties to be maintained and preserved.

However, the State does not appear to have reservations about going in the opposite direction in respect of some of what is being proposed in the Bill. I have already put on record a well-known English singer who is in a gay relationship who said it will break his son's heart to realise he has not got a mother. We know from many who have gone through that trauma the efforts they will make subsequently to reach out to their mothers and we know how heart-rending are those reunions. In general, it transpires that the natural bond, after many decades, is somehow rebuilt. I am sure many regret and, in other instances, this House would regret the fact that the bonds were ever severed and would be highly critical of those who might have played some part in facilitating that. Often times it was families and it may have been institutions. It was a case of the State to some extent facilitating and, perhaps, letting down those children.

I mentioned earlier the case of a lady raised by a lesbian couple whom she is very effusive in complimenting on their commitment to her and the life she had with them but subsequently came to recognise the void that was created in her life. She added, "My father's absence created a huge hole in me and I ached every day for a dad". We are creating legislation which will have many such children echoing those sentiments in the years to come. Why would we do that, I ask, if the Bill is really about the best interest of the child?