Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for her time. I thank the Senators who supported my successful amendment to this Bill on Committee Stage and continue to do so. The amendment represented a crucial and necessary addition to the Bill that placed a responsibility on the State to support birth parents when their child is taken into foster care and to improve the chances of eventual family reunification. I was delighted to see it attract majority support in the Seanad.

The policy intention of the amendment was relatively simply. We wanted to give effect to the obligation on State authorities that exists under Irish law and international human rights law to take positive steps towards reunification of children who are in care, where possible with the birth parents. Specifically, the amendment was drafted to create an obligation on the Child and Family Agency to support the birth parents during the period between their child being taken into foster care and when an adoption order is being made by the High Court in which the consent of the birth parents is dispensed with. That was a response to the reality that exists in practice where the agency will often offer supports to parents while their child is still in their home but will stop doing so when the child enters foster care, greatly lessening the chance that the birth parents will ever be in a position to adequately care for the child in the future.

International human rights law, particularly the European Convention on Human Rights, and Irish domestic law both recognise that there is a positive onus on State authorities to seek and achieve the reunification of children in their care with their natural parents. It is not sufficient to sit back and wait for the parents to address the issues that resulted in the child being taken into care. The State must take positive steps designed to facilitate reunification. A failure to do so would amount to a failure to respect the right to family life of both the children and parents involved. It was with that intention to give statutory underpinning to this commitment that the amendment was drafted. That was the policy intention of the amendment.

In the weeks following Committee Stage of the Bill, the Minister, Deputy Zappone, and her departmental officials were kind enough to make the time to meet with me on a number of occasions to discuss the amendment. The Minister and her officials raised a number of practical concerns with the wording of the amendment as inserted on Committee Stage. As a result, we agreed a revised version of the amendment that incorporated a wide range of feedback.The text was written by the Minister's own department officials and it was agreed that it be introduced by the Government at Report Stage. This unfortunately did not happen. The agreement was reneged on and the debate was cancelled. We now stand here six weeks later and the best that the Minister and her Department can come up with to support birth parents whose children are about to be adopted without their consent is to simply delete my amendment. I will explain why I am opposed to the ministerial direction presently. We have had months of constructive engagement, I and my office have put in hours and hours trying to address the departmental concern with the amendment, trying to figure out how this can work in practice and how it would be feasible to support birth parents during the relevant period. To come up with this now and to remove my amendment is to wash our hands of the issue of birth parents when the child is in foster care. I do not accept that this is the best the Government can do and I urge the Minister to re-introduce the revised amendment that we agreed on when this goes to the Dáil. I will explain why the revised amendment is a positive one.

First, with regard to the issue of the ministerial direction, I do not doubt the Minister's intention. I understand why the Minister feels that it is broader and what it will do. For me, however, this is another measure that Túsla can be directed to do that it will not do in the end. It is not a precondition for adoption. Túsla has many recommendations and policies and lots of lines that it has to follow in ensuring the best course of action for families. It often does not do this. The problem that kept coming up for the revised amendment and with my amendment, and it came up in every single meeting that I had with the Minister and her officials, was one of administration, namely the administration of proving that parents have been referred to the relevant supports. We should never place administration over people. We should want nothing more than to have a positive reporting system that accurately captures the timeline of a parent's engagement with Túsla.

When the High Court agrees to dispense with the consent of a parent in cases of adoption, it must be proven to be just and warranted and it must stand up to legal scrutiny. This cannot be achieved with a ministerial direction that has no statutory underpinning. A ministerial direction is a general order to the Child and Family Agency and will not make referring birth parents to supports the criteria for adoption proceeding without their consent. If a case has been made in court as to why a parent is having their legal relationship with their child permanently removed without their consent, Túsla must be held accountable and be able to demonstrate that parents were referred to supports when their child was taken into foster care so as to make them better able to care for that child. The direction from the Minister means nothing if Túsla claim that they do not have the ability, capacity or administrative proficiency to demonstrate that they refer parents to supports.

This week I was reminded of why I need to trust my gut and fight for this amendment, if not the revised amendment. This was when I was contacted personally by a family whose father is currently incarcerated and had addiction issues. He is a loving father and looked after his children very well until the time of his incarceration. Unfortunately, the mother of those children took her own life a few weeks ago. I will try not to get upset because this is a situation that is quite close to my own family. I got a phone call from this distressed family during the week about a visit to this man in prison from a social worker. This concerned the future of his two children and his stepchild. This man, who does not even have secondary level education, was not even offered the support of having someone present during the meeting with social worker. This is just after losing his partner to suicide. Not so much as a chaplain or a prison security guard were asked to sit in on that meeting so that he could understand the complexity of everything being laid out before him about his two young babies, aged six and seven. The very last line of the notes from the meeting, typed up by the social worker, stated that the father is not currently in the position to care for the children, nor will he be in the future.

This is based on one meeting with the father of these children. Some social worker who had never met him before went in with pre-typed notes. There is no case of him with the social workers. They decided in there to sit down and have him read over a care plan and intentions to bring him to Family Law Courts in a few weeks. Luckily, somebody in this House, a Senator who is a barrister in this area, intervened and helped me to try to stop that happening.

My concern is that we have vulnerable adults faced with forms and sheets about the future of their children who do not even have the literacy to understand them. Never mind being offered supports to help him care for his children when he gets out, this man was not even offered someone present at the meeting to support him and help him understand. We need to understand that there are parents out there who need to be referred to supports. When it comes to removing someone's consent in the court system, we should expect nothing less than Túsla to be able to stand up and give an account of the supports offered to a family. I know that it does that when the child is in the home. When the child is removed from the home however, and I have dealt with cases in treble figures of this kind in my 16 years of working with social protection, there will sometimes be a social worker who is perfect and has everything covered. In another case, however, there may be a social worker who has recorded barely any understanding in his or her notes.

An inconsistency in the Túsla administration should not be a reason not to introduce an amendment ensuring that parents are referred to supports. It is not that difficult and there will be no delay in the court system. It is just one more thing on a checklist of things already required. As someone who has worked in a care system, the notes that I kept could be taken out of a drawer straight away to prove the supports I offered people in the community and addiction sectors. I do not see why a whole institution with resources behind it cannot also produce the same kind of proof in court, especially when we are moving to a policy that removes the consent of a parent. This is the first time that this has ever been done in Ireland. Why not make sure that when we do something so big for the first time, we can stand over it in court? We can then know that we have done the right thing and that that parent was never going to be able to care for his or her child. We do not know that if we never referred them to supports.