We resume with representatives of the Adoption Rights Alliance. I welcome Ms. Susan Lohan and Ms Claire McGettrick. Before we begin I draw witnesses' attention to the fact that while members of the committee have absolute privilege, the same privilege does not extend to witnesses appearing before the committee. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that members should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the House or an official by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. We are grateful to the representatives for the detailed presentation they forwarded to us, which was studied by members, and I ask them to give an executive summary, after which we will go to members for questions.
Discussion with Adoption Rights Alliance.
Ms Susan Lohan
I thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to speak. The Adoption Rights Alliance is a group that has been set up to protect the rights of Ireland's 40,000-plus adopted people in legislation. We are the successor of a group that has existed in various guises for about 20 years. I have volunteered in this area for about eight years and I sit on an advisory group to the Adoption Board, which set up the national adoption contact preference register and the standard framework for information and tracing.
Our comments on the Bill are, I am afraid, quite negative. While we welcome the ratification of the Hague Convention, we feel this is a deeply flawed Bill. There is not a single new provision with regard to information and tracing for Ireland's adopted people. The phrase "child's rights" does not even appear in the Bill and, most worryingly, it allows Ireland to continue bilateral adoption agreements with any and every country it wishes. Members may have had an opportunity to read a recent report by UNICEF which blames the existence of bilateral agreements for discouraging countries from acceding to the Hague Convention.
In addition, we are disappointed that nothing from the key articles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which include enshrining children's identities, giving them rights to their birth certificates, and continuity of culture and ethnic background, has been included in the Bill. The Bill, in time-honoured tradition, still allows for the release of false birth certificates to adopted people, which can be used to hide from them the fact that they are adopted. Incredibly, it does not actually give adopted people the right to know they are adopted.
The parts of the Bill dealing with the Hague Convention are quite weak; it does not sufficiently explore the fact that inter-country adoption is an alternative means of caring for a child or that it is a measure of last resort. We regard this Bill as promoting inter-country adoption as a first resort. The fact that the Bill includes no provision for information and tracing for adopted people is incredibly disappointing to me, Ms McGettrick and other founding members of our group. We took part in an extensive adoption consultation process in 2003 under the stewardship of Deputy Brian Lenihan, then Minister with responsibility for children, and we were promised legislation swiftly after that. Under Deputy Hanafin we were also promised swift introduction of legislation although, thankfully, that Bill crashed and burned, given that it provided for the criminalisation of adopted people.
The other deficiencies we identified include the lack of provision for freedom of information around the adoption authorities' own activities, the fact that the existing adoption agencies will seamlessly become accredited bodies and that there is no provision for open adoption in this Bill. All of these facets are deeply disappointing to us. The drafters of this Bill only show regard for children at the moment they are adopted and fail to recognise those children go on to become people like Ms McGettrick and me for whom heritage, culture and family origins, that vital history, is obliterated and will remain so for us, our children and grandchildren.
I call on the committee to take the opportunity to make significant changes to this Bill. We have heard from Deputy Reilly and our contacts at the Adoption Board that the adoption legislation is unlikely to be revisited for some years after this, so this is a vital opportunity to reform Irish adoption law and it should not be missed.
Ms Claire McGettrick
Good afternoon. I am an adopted person. I am also the co-founder of the Adoption Rights Alliance. I have worked voluntarily and full time in the adoption area for eight years.
Of the hundreds of adopted people I have helped over the years, the vast majority have sought assistance in tracing their natural mother and-or natural father or other family members. This is also the experience of our colleagues in our sister organisations, the nationwide Adoption Support Network of Ireland and Know My Own in Cork. Queries often include complaints about church-run adoption agencies, which openly discourage an applicant or refuse to carry out a trace. Some have waiting lists of up to four years because they either do not know about or refuse to employ a professional genealogist.
There are well intentioned individuals in private agencies and in the HSE but their hands are tied by the 57 year old legislation, the lack of staff and the lack of oversight by the Adoption Board, which cannot even identify the requirements for a registered adoption agency. The appendices contain a letter from the Adoption Board to that effect.
In our experience and that of our colleagues in Know My Own and ASNI, the majority of adopted people will opt to conduct their own traces. This is often because of the mistrust of certain church-run agencies and the long waiting lists in other agencies. For most people, however, the absolute overall need is to own the search and regain some of the power that has been taken away from them in infancy.
Against the backdrop of no less than two seasons of RTE's "Who Do You Think You Are", in which celebrities can explore the treasure trove of their family heritage unhindered, we remind the committee of the instinctive need of each and every person to know their natural family history and heritage, a knowledge that has been denied adopted people for 57 years.
The consequences of living without adequate medical records cannot be underestimated. In one case, an adopted person's son was given an anaesthetic to which he was allergic, something the adopted person would have known if his own early medical information had been made available to him. In order to treat the child, who was in intensive care for five days, the doctors needed to know the specific nature of the allergy and the adoption agency refused to even look at the adoption file let alone disclose the medical information contained in it. Fortunately the child recovered from his reaction but this recovery was not aided in any way by the agency.
Some adopted people do not take the risk of vaccinating their children due to the lack of knowledge of their medical background. Additionally, adopted people are embarrassed and worried on a regular basis when they cannot give a doctor their family medical history or where they see "none" written in the space where medical history should be. The issue of medical records clearly demonstrates that adoption does not only affect the adopted person but their children and all future generations left with a gap in the family history.
We are also gravely concerned about the lack of post-adoption services for children brought into Ireland from overseas for adoption. Over the years I have had numerous queries from adoptive families seeking advice on how to help their adopted children to deal with the challenges of growing up as an adopted child. We have heard anecdotally of cases where adoptive parents discourage their internationally adopted children from speaking their original language. Adoption is not like regular parenting because the adopted child is grieving for his or her natural mother, regardless of the circumstances of the adoption. It is, therefore, clearly negligent to not provide post-adoption services.
We are equally concerned about the lack of tracing information services for people adopted from outside of Ireland, some of whom have approached us already. As hard as it is for those who have been adopted domestically to search, it is a truly daunting task for those who must go to their country of origin where, in most cases, they will not speak their mother tongue and may discover they were obtained for adoption illegally.
People adopted from overseas will continue to be put on an unequal footing to domestically adopted people because the index to the register for foreign adoptions is not being made available for public scrutiny and they will be forced to make applications through the Adoption Board.
We feel the proposed Adoption Bill does not go far enough to ensure all inter-country adoptions only take place as a last resort and to uphold the principle that adoption should be about finding homes for children, not children for homes. There is no doubt that a supply and demand situation exists, as outlined in the recent UNICEF report, and we believe the Adoption Bill should do more to promote child sponsorship programmes for overseas children in need of homes and to promote long-term fostering for the thousands of Irish children awaiting homes in the care system as an alternative to inter-country adoption.
For over 20 years, voluntary organisations have been picking up the slack for successive Irish Governments due to the lack of legislation. If this Adoption Bill is passed in its present form, another 20 years will be spent cleaning up the Government's mess and some future joint committee will have to answer to those adopted from abroad and ignorance will be no defence.
We thank the committee for its time and welcome any questions.
I had the opportunity to read the paper the delegation gave us. They have very little to say that I would disagree with. After so many years of reports, consultations, deliberations and court cases related to tracing and the need for access to background information, I find it incomprehensible that this legislation ignores all of that. The Bill presented to us was correctly described as a consolidating measure. For many years we were promised a Bill that would reform our adoption laws, not a consolidation Bill. I find it beyond belief that we are re-enacting legislation that was enacted as long ago as 1952 and which fails to address the broad range of issues that has emerged in the last 25 years.
There is nothing the Adoption Rights Alliance can say about tracing and access to medical records I disagree with. I find it incredible that in the context of the small number of domestic adoptions we have in Ireland, and when social workers have been encouraging open adoptions, the Minister is introducing legislation that ignores the practice in its entirety.
The contribution the group is making is invaluable and I hope it informs the work of this committee on Committee Stage of the Bill. I hope there would be fundamental changes to the legislation. It would be a major error to enact this as a consolidating measure in the hope that some reforming legislation will present itself, based on the time lag in addressing any of the issues we are now discussing.
I thank the group for the presentation which was very helpful.
I also thank the delegates for their presentation and their perspective on the Bill. It consolidates what was said by the previous group, namely, that the Bill allows for the ratification of the convention and consolidates legislation but does nothing to modernise adoption law. The first point Ms Lohan made about the right to know one is adopted is something that must be in the legislation. I thank her for raising that point. If the representatives wish to suggest wording in regard to any of these issues we would welcome that.
On the point about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that Ms Lohan raised at the outset, she stated it should be partially or perhaps fully incorporated into the legislation. She might expand on the way that might be incorporated into the legislation.
I want to ask also about the issue of freedom of information. Is she suggesting that the freedom of information legislation should apply to adoption agencies? If that is the case, I presume the normal provisions apply in that if there is personal information about somebody it is not available to other people. That would be important in respect of this legislation. I ask her to expand on that issue.
Ms Lohan spoke about adoption agencies. Does she believe there is a need for newly formulated adoption agencies? That is a question I had intended to ask later when we met with the Council of Irish Adoption Agencies as well as the issue of religion and how it relates to adoption. I do not know if she has comments to make on that but——
Ms Susan Lohan
I do.
I welcome the representatives and thank them for their presentation. I do not have any questions. Their presentation was concise and we have been given some additional information as well. We will give it serious consideration when the legislation is being dealt with on Committee Stage. If the representatives have any wording to propose by way of amendments or whatever, we would be glad to receive them.
I welcome the information that has been passed on to us because to a great extent if one is not in that position it is difficult to identify the pitfalls. I was involved in the campaign with the former Minister, Nora Owen, in Cork, in terms of the previous legislation, which was appalling, and by omission this legislation is having the same effect. I accept the criminalising element is not in this legislation but that is about the only element omitted from it. That campaign was hugely successful and for the first time people who would never have identified themselves in public spoke out publicly, whether they were the parents of adopted children or people who had been adopted. I knew some of them for years and never realised they were adopted.
Some of the actions I saw then formed my opinion in terms of access to information. People should not be worried about an adult arriving on the doorstep of someone who gave that person up for adoption when they were young and in different circumstances. There are various protections in place. If the contact is not wanted it is delayed but it should only be delayed for a period. It should not be about closing a file and saying, "No. Never again".
The other aspect that is worrying is in terms of medical records. One does not have to disclose the identity of the parent to give medical information, although I do not understand why that should not happen. That issue could be addressed in this Bill in that, as we saw in the Ryan report, whole swathes could be blacked out to prevent someone being identified. I do not understand that aspect.
Also, in terms of the agencies which did the initial adoption, I am not certain it is a good idea that they would be involved at this point. I am sure there were extraordinarily good people in those agencies but it is about attitude and how we deal with issues.
Obviously the representatives have been in contact with the Minister. We would like to know what the Minister's response has been because we will be dealing with that shortly and it would be nice to know whether he is open to these amendments. In fairness, if we were to do what should be done in this Bill we would almost have to reconstruct it entirely.
I thank the representatives for their presentation. They have given us a somewhat different perspective on the issues than the groups we have heard already. Their frustration is obvious. This is obviously an issue they would have liked to have seen addressed long before now.
I was struck by what they said about children growing up and needing to know their heritage. In so far as the Bill is trying to address the issues that will challenge us into the future, I have a sense from the representatives that they are still dealing with the residue of mistakes of the past. That is the area where they believe the Bill is seriously lacking. They might comment on that for members.
Ms Claire McGettrick
Before we respond to that, in terms of suggested wording for amendments, we have submitted a comprehensive document to the committee with our comments on the Bill, including suggested amendments. If there is anything on which the members would like clarification we are more than willing to help in that regard.
Ms Susan Lohan
Essentially, it is the church backed agencies. They are entirely moribund. They are operating almost on a skeletal staff. Two of them recently passed their records over to the Health Service Executive in one instance and to the Adoption Board in another, thus causing further problems for those two bodies. In addition to the waiting lists they operate already for the files they are in custody of they now have that additional burden.
The reason for the ongoing problems is that those of us who want to seek information or trace our natural family members are obliged to go back in the first instance to the original agencies. Thankfully, those original agencies are no longer placing children for adoption. Poverty is no longer being exploited to remove children from their natural families but the custodians of those records are mindful of the fact that the records hold fairly damning information. They reveal illegal adoptions, and by that I mean where a child was registered as being the natural child of the adoptive parents, thus the birth registration was falsified. I dealt with somebody as recently as six weeks ago who, 50 years after the event, was turning up to Joyce House to register properly the birth of her child. We shall see what the Irish authorities do with that. I would not be convinced that they will do anything and the people who allowed those false registrations to occur will probably go unpunished.
In terms of the files, it is in their best interests to keep those files secret and thus they try to dissuade adoptive people from searching. As recently as 2001 I was told that I was embarking on a selfish course of action, that I should stop and reflect, and perhaps not pursue that course of action. That was said with no knowledge of the circumstances of my natural parents who, for all they knew, might have been delighted to see me.
Our first recommendation would be that the existing agencies should not transfer seamlessly into a new regime. There should be a strict accreditation process for any new agency but, equally, we would argue that those with vested interests in adopting children now should not be allowed to have any control over accreditation agencies. That was mentioned earlier by one of the other groups. They, too, could be deemed to have a vested interest and any agency involved in a matching process for children abroad with prospective adoptive parents here should be above board, impartial and independent.
Deputy Kathleen Lynch referred to the issue of freedom of information. If the provisions of such legislation could have been extended to include adoption files, we would not be here now. We have pushed for that to be done for many years, but each time our request was met with the putting forward of a mountain of arguments against it. The adoption legislation would be strengthened if the rights of the child — we are adopted children who are now adults — were enshrined in it. There is a lack of joined-up thinking in this respect. If our rights as adopted children were enshrined in any new adoption legislation, they would also have to be echoed in any freedom of information legislation.
We were disappointed that freedom of information standards did not apply to the operations of the Adoption Board. Its current corporate plan covering the period 2004 to 2007, which is two years out of date, contains many lofty ideals about freedom of information and transparency but there is no reference to that in this Bill.
I forgot to mention that adopted people have never been represented on the Adoption Board and they are being excluded once again under the provisions of this Bill. This is an era when the Adoption Board has created a new unit to deal with information and tracing inquiries, yet it has not seen fit to invite an adopted person to sit on its board.
Ms Claire McGettrick
I would like to address the issue of the myth Deputy Lynch raised concerning a person who arrives on the doorstep of a natural mother who has been hiding in the closet, as it were, for 20 years. Such stories are a myth and it is time we all grew up and stopped listening to such myths. Adopted people on reaching adulthood are mature and they want the best possible outcome from a reunion. Therefore, the last thing an adopted person will do, as I am sure the Deputy is well aware from dealing with people's cases in Cork, is knock on a person's door without warning as they want the best possible outcome from a reunion. We usually recommend that a person would write a discreet and cryptic letter by way of introduction to ensure that only the natural mother would know who is contacting her.
On the topic of reunion, whether it be from the adoptive parent's side or the natural parent's side, life events such as births, marriages and deaths happen in families all the time. For adoptive families, a reunion is just one of those events that happens in families. Families are dynamic and family members get used to such changes and get on with their lives. Adoption should not be treated any differently from other such events. A big smokescreen and many myths surround adoption, which should be removed. The omissions in this legislation bear that out.
Ms Susan Lohan
Deputy O'Sullivan referred to the UN convention. We wish to make the point that the Hague Convention is not the highest watermark that exists in terms of inter-country adoption. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child sets a higher standard in regard to respecting origins, family histories and ensuring all avenues have been exploited in the country of origin prior to inter-country adoption being considered. I was staggered to discover from a recent report that there is no domestic adoption unit at governmental level in Vietnam, rather there is only an inter-country unit. Therefore, I question how we could even contemplate continuing a bilateral agreement with Vietnam when, demonstrably, it cannot show that it has exhausted all avenues domestically before it considers an inter-country adoption. I concur with the findings of the UNICEF group that all bilateral agreements with Vietnam should be suspended immediately.
Are there any outstanding questions to be addressed or do the witnesses wish to make any further comments before we conclude?
Ms Claire McGettrick
We have not had a response from the Minister, with whom we have sought a meeting. The Chairman said we were still dealing with the residue of failures of the past. We want to get across the point that adoption is not only about us, the adopted people, it is also about our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. All future generations are affected by the failures of the Government in regard to adoption. It is not only I but my children and grandchildren who will not be able to get medical records. The right to know one's history and heritage is equally important. A major gap in the family tree of adopted persons exists as a result of closed, secret adoptions.
I thank the delegates for their contributions and we look forward to further engagement with them between now and the passage of the legislation.
I propose to suspend the meeting until 2 p.m. when we will meet delegates from the Council of Irish Adoption Agencies.