Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will not speak at great length. I thank the Minister, as I believe she is open to working with us, particularly on the substitute amendment I have tabled. This recognises that the missing piece of adoption in Ireland is open and semi-open adoption, and that this is something due for consideration. I have spoken to the Irish Care Leavers' Network. Many of its members have been in some of the worst and most difficult aspects of our care system. It is very strongly in favour of the introduction and consideration of open adoption. It conducted a survey recently of 100 of its members to ask whether they would have wished to have been adopted. These are people who went through the entire care system without this option. A total of 60 said they probably would have. They were also asked would they have considered adoption if it had not meant the complete severing of ties with the person's former family, that is, if we had open adoption, and far more of its members said they would have sought adoption or been interested in adoption in such circumstances. The foster carers of Ireland very strongly believe open adoption is the direction in which we need to go and should be one of the options.

I realise open adoption will not always be the appropriate option, but it should be one of the options on the table to ensure we have a new modern transparent system and that children can have access to the full gamut of relationships. Barnardos has also spoken about the dangers and some of the negative impacts we have had from Ireland's system of closed adoption in the past and the need to move to a new system. This is uniform, and the head of the Adoption Authority of Ireland, in his academic work, has spoken about open adoption as the missing piece. This is the next step for Ireland as a nation if we want to move past some of the legacy of a closed system, secrecy and a dynamic which seeks, in some cases, to narrow the sphere of reference for children. It would lead to more adoption and more effective adoption because people would not be placed in a binary choice position. At present, to agree to being adopted, to choose to adopt or to agree or give consent to a child being adopted is a zero-sum game in Ireland. There is no acknowledgement of potential ongoing valuable relationships. These may not be relationships as primary carers but relationships a child may wish to maintain, a parent may wish to maintain or that a new adoptive family may wish that child to maintain.

I welcome the fact the Minister is looking at the issue. I hope it happens during her tenure in office. I am concerned about this, because I believe the Minister acknowledges and recognises the issue. I appreciate she has indicated an openness to considering and initiating a review of this. In this context I will only propose the substitute amendment.

Other reasons we need to examine this issue include that we are in a different legal context now. The constitutional assumptions we have had in Ireland need to be changed and looked at. The family unit is in the Constitution, but we now have the new Article 42A of the Constitution on the rights of the child. It is consistent with the rights of the child, and the very serious article to which we gave a collective mandate to include in our Constitution, that we consider the child's full right to relationships. This is part of the spectrum of open adoption. It is also very much in the spirit of the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015, which recognises that a child has a wide spectrum of meaningful relationships. To be in tune with the constitutional amendment and current legislation it is very important that we review the issue and reconsider it. I thank the Minister for giving it consideration. I wish it was included in this legislation, but I look forward to future legislation which may address it.