I welcome the Minister of State. The issue I wish to raise is the need for the Minister for Education and Skills to review the situation whereby public servants would be entitled to more days off to attend local council meetings. There is an increased requirement for public representatives, many of whom are involved in the education system, to attend not only council meetings but also the new municipal district meetings, in addition to other meetings related to the council. They should be afforded more flexibility and more time off from their work to attend those meetings on behalf of their constituents.
Adjournment Matters
Local Authority Members' Remit
Gabh mo leithscéal as bheith déanach, ach bhí mé gnóthach in áit éigin eile. I am replying on behalf of the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn. The current position is that where a teacher in a primary or post-primary school is an elected member of a local authority, paid absence of up to ten school days in a school year may be availed of in order to attend meetings, but only where such meetings are held during school opening hours. Prior approval must be obtained from the employer, who, in approving any such leave, must take into consideration the welfare and educational needs of the students.
The terms and conditions applying to teacher absences are agreed under the auspices of the Teacher Conciliation Council, a body established in accordance with the terms of the conciliation and arbitration scheme for teachers. The council is composed of representatives of teachers, school management, the Department of Education and Skills and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and is chaired by an official of the Labour Relations Commission. Teacher Conciliation Council meetings are held six times per year, with sub-committees held as required to discuss issues in more detail. It is open to either side to request the placing of any matter on the agenda. Implicit in this is the question of when council meetings are held. Whether one is a teacher or not, it is very hard to attend a morning or afternoon meeting if one is in full-time employment. There is an issue with regard to work hours and meetings being held that people cannot attend because they are working. Holding meetings at night or at other times, or staggering or changing the days or the times, is probably the only way of dealing with it. I accept it is a problem but in this case it should be raised at the conciliation council.
I thank the Minister for attending and giving me valuable information on how to make progress on this issue.
Legal Matters
I welcome the Minister. This is my second time in 18 months to raise this matter on the Adjournment. I stand over what I said previously and nothing has occurred since. This is about the appointment of a third Taxing Master.
The current position is that if someone wins a High Court action and his or her solicitor fails to agree the costs with the defending solicitor they have to refer it to taxation. If an agreement has not been reached the matter comes before the Taxing Master in the High Court but there are only two Taxing Masters. The problem is that there is huge delay. I have read the reply the Minister gave to Deputy Michael McGrath and I am sorry to say that the information in that reply is incorrect. It is correct in that from the date a case is set down for taxation it takes ten weeks before one will get an initial hearing but the decisions being made are not made at the end of the ten weeks. I was involved in one case where after 12 months a decision still had not been made. I know of numerous solicitors who have furnished all the evidence, both from the defendants and the plaintiffs, and seven to eight months later a decision has not been made. While the reply given by the Courts Service is technically correct, what the Courts Service is not giving is details of decisions.
I will give the Minister the figures. In 2011, 1,820 summonses were issued for taxation and 796 certificates issued. In 2013, 1,350 summons were issued. The reason summons were not issued is because people are aware of the considerable delays and they are trying every other means to try to resolve the issues. In 2013, only 345 certificates were issued by the Taxing Masters. That figure has decreased by more than 50% in less than two years, not because the work is not being presented but because decisions are not being reached.
In fairness to the Taxing Masters I will not go into the reasons for the delays but the process has come to a standstill. I understand one legal practice has taken the matter before the High Court for it to rule on how it should be dealt with.
This matter will not go away, and the response given to Deputy McGrath is not an accurate picture of what has been happening on the ground. If one talks to a legal practitioner or legal costs accountants, who employ quite a number of people, they will say that many of them have had to let staff go because of delays in getting decisions. That indicates the seriousness of the situation. Small legal practices in rural areas might deal with two or three big cases in the year and they are waiting three years to get paid. We are talking not only about solicitors but barristers, engineers, quantity surveyors and medics, and none of them are getting paid. This matter cannot be left as it is and I will not accept the response given in last few days to Deputy Michael McGrath.
I am taking this matter on behalf of the Minister for Justice and Equality who unfortunately cannot be here, and I apologise for keeping the Senator waiting. The Minister appreciates that people, especially legal practitioners, are very interested in the matter of taxation of costs and efficiency.
As the Senator is aware, there are two Taxing Masters who perform functions of a judicial nature in respect of legal costs. Their aim is to establish a fair relationship between services rendered and the cost of those services. The Taxing Masters are independent officeholders attached to the High Court. The positions are governed by the Court Officers Act 1926 and the Courts (Supplemental Provisions) Act 1961.
The Courts Service has informed the Minister for Justice and Equality that the current waiting time from lodgment of a new application to the first date on which it will be listed is ten to 11 weeks. The Courts Service also stated, however, that the volume of work being dealt with is such that delays can occur in delivery of considered rulings, particularly in the more difficult cases.
A number of measures have already been introduced to tackle the backlog. These include improved scheduling of cases. Practitioners have also been informed that all requisite documentation is to be lodged at the commencement of the taxation process. It has been necessary to inform parties that taxation cannot be completed due to the documents either not being lodged or where proofs are not in order.
The Minister was also advised that practitioners have been informed that any application for urgent taxation can be brought to the attention of the Taxing Masters' office, and this process has been availed of regularly. Complaints should be brought directly to the attention of the Taxing Masters' Office.
Regarding the modernisation of the current legal costs regime and of the framework for the "taxation" or determination of disputed legal costs, the programme for Government undertook to "establish independent regulation of the legal profession to improve access and competition, make legal costs more transparent and ensure adequate procedures for addressing consumer complaints". The Legal Services Regulation Bill 2011, which has completed Committee Stage in the Dáil and in respect of which the Minister expects Report Stage to be completed in the current session, provides for the establishment of a new office of the legal costs adjudicators to replace the Taxing Masters' office. The new office will modernise the way disputed legal costs are adjudicated upon, with greater transparency. The determinations of the adjudicators will be guided by legal costs principles. A publicly accessible register of determinations, which will include the outcomes and reasons for determinations about costs, will be established and maintained. The Minister is considering further amendments on the management and efficiency of the operation of the Office of the Legal Costs Adjudicator under the Bill.
It should be recalled also that the two existing Taxing Masters have been appointed by public competition under legislation enacted to prepare the way for the legal costs reforms contained in the Legal Services Regulation Bill. The Bill is set to introduce a range of structural reforms that will make legal costs far more amenable to public scrutiny and competition and subject to more modern and business-like adjudication. As the necessary reforms are already under way, the matters raised by the Senator can continue to be resolved as part of the managed transition and as may be considered appropriate by the new Office of the Legal Costs Adjudicator. That said, serious concerns about the effects of delays in processing of cases have been raised with the Minister and she is having the situation examined with a view to establishing whether any other short-term measures are necessary and possible.
I thank the Minister for his response. I have got the figures on the stamp duty collected for 2012. In order to take up one's certificate of taxation, one must pay stamp duty. The total stamp duty paid in 2012 for 367 certificates was €805,000. As I said earlier, the number of certificates issued in 2011 reduced from 796, therefore, all we needed to do to pay for a third Taxing Master was to issue an additional 200 certificates. The State is now losing money by not having a third person appointed. A total of €805,000 was brought in in 2012, when the number starts to decrease substantially. The new procedure about which the Minister spoke will not be in place until this time next year. In the meantime many people throughout the country will not get paid until certificates are issued, and that is taking eight to 12 months. I will raise this matter again with the Minister for Justice and Equality. The solution to this problem is to appoint a third Taxing Master for 12 months to deal with this issue. It will be cost neutral from the State's point of view; in fact, it will make more money for the State. I seriously ask that that be taken on board.
I assure the Senator that I will bring the points he has raised to the attention of the Minister for Justice and Equality, particularly the statistics and the point that the income to the State could be increased if a third person was appointed. The Minister is examining all these issues and I will ask her to revert to the Senator directly on the particular issues he raised.
Inland Fisheries
I thank the Minister for coming to the House to respond to this matter, which concerns an area directly dealt with in his brief. The Minister will be very familiar with the River Suir because it rises in the Devil's Bit and flows down through many areas including Thurles, from where his own people originally come. It flows through Tipperary, Kilkenny and on into the Waterford estuary. It is one of the longest rivers in the country.
The Minister is au fait with the issue I raise. He was with us in Carrick-on-Suir almost 12 months ago and travelled part of the river with us that day. He is very familiar with the river and the fishing situation. In preparing for this Adjournment Debate I want to acknowledge the help I got from staff of Inland Fisheries Ireland, particularly David McInerney in the Clonmel office, for providing me with some background information.
I have previously raised in the House the concern among snap net fishermen who fish out of small boats along the River Suir in places such as Carrick-on-Suir, Fiddown and Mooncoin into the estuary. They are licensed and each licence has 20 tags per year. In other words, a licence holder is permitted to take out 20 salmon. They have been prevented from fishing this year based on evidence provided by Inland Fisheries Ireland, IFI. The conservation limits are so low that IFI will not permit snap net fishing for salmon this year.
There are 148 salmon rivers in the country, 25 of which have fish counters on them, 40 are monitored by way of analysis of rod catches while the remaining 83 are subject to a more convoluted and complex system of measurement, which includes salmon red counts and juvenile salmon index counts. I will not go into detail on this but the clearest way to measure the salmon stock in a river is to use a fish counter. Before the Minister of State took up office, there was a botched effort to install a salmon counter on the River Suir west of Carrick-on-Suir. No planning permission was sought for the counter and the project was abandoned. A salmon counter is the only way to guarantee accuracy. For example, changes in the weather and so on can changed the basis of salmon redd counts and juvenile salmon index counts from one year to the next and, therefore, the only way to be accurate is to use salmon counters. However, it is on the basis of the other counts and information that snap net fishermen have been prevented from fishing this year.
I acknowledge that members of the independent standing scientific committee addressed members of the snap net group a number of times earlier this year and explained why they were taking them off the river but this was presented as a fait accompli and no arbitration was available. The fishermen had to accept the position and not fish this year. Such fishing is not a commercially viable enterprise anymore because of the limited numbers but it is a tradition that goes back more than 1,000 years, which has been passed on from family to family along the River Suir. The fishermen are disappointed that they have been prevented from fishing the river this year without proper mechanisms to analyse the fish stocks in place. Rod catches are used to measure stocks but it is forgotten that angling is only permitted for a number of months annually and, therefore, one can only measure the number of fish caught through the use of tags during those months. That system is incomplete and cannot be used as an accurate fish count.
I ask the Minister of State to re-examine this issue for all these reasons and to provide clarity for the fishermen affected in counties Tipperary, Waterford and Kilkenny.
I thank the Senator for raising the matter and it is important to set out the background. I visited the area with the former Minister of State at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, Brian Hayes, and we had an enjoyable and useful interaction with the community.
Ireland manages salmon stocks on an individual river basis and this is carried out by IFI. The individual river management strategy is based on the fact that each of Ireland's 143 salmon rivers, including the River Suir, has its own unique stock of salmon, which migrates to sea as juveniles and returns to the same river in adulthood to spawn and create the next generation of fish exclusive to that river. Our wild salmon management regime is now viewed by North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organisation, NASCO, parties and others as exemplary in the international context. The work of IFI ensures Ireland leads the way internationally in how it manages salmon rivers. This proactive approach to conservation and meeting international obligations is not without cost and, in this regard, significant resources are expended every year to ensure everything is up to date.
IFI is supported in its management of salmon stocks by a statutorily based scientific committee comprising scientists from IFI, Bord lascaigh Mhara, BIM, the Loughs Agency, the National Parks and Wildlife Service, the Marine Institute, the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute, AFB, Northern Ireland other State bodies and third level institutions. This independent scientific committee assesses and offers advice on the predicted stocks status in all 143 salmon rivers each year against that their conservation limit using the most recent five years of available data. The conservation limit is the number of adult salmon required to maintain a healthy population - the stock level that maximises the long-term average surplus.
The Atlantic salmon is a protected species and Ireland's current salmon management regime complies with the EU habitats directive. The conservation imperative means that exploitation of salmon is only permitted where the independent scientific committee determines that the stock exceeds its conservation limit. The annual advice of the committee is available on our website.
For 2014, of the 143 rivers assessed, 57 are open to harvestable surplus, 30 are open to catch and release and 56 are closed. Each of the rivers will be reviewed again as part of the annual scientific assessment later this year. Commercial harvest fisheries, including snap netting, are only permitted on individual river stocks that are shown to have a surplus of fish in excess of the conservation limit. Fisheries in estuaries may also be permitted where the stocks from individual rivers entering the estuaries meet their individual conservation limits but if one of the rivers does not, one cannot fish in the estuary because one cannot be sure where the salmon came from.
District committees comprising commercial and angling stakeholders, as well as IFI and BIM, have been established to discuss the sharing of a surplus if there is one available. The conservation limit for a river is the number of spawning salmon required to produce the next generation. The conservation limit is calculated similarly for all of Ireland's 143 salmon rivers based on the wetted area, latitude and other river specific factors such as the proportion of one sea winter salmon and multi-sea winter salmon in the population, the average weight of these salmon, proportions of male and female salmon and average numbers of eggs per female fish. "Adult salmon returns" are determined on the basis of the counter figures where one is in operation or the rod catch figures from mandatory logbooks using the most recent five years of data. The data are used to determine whether the river has a surplus for exploitation or a deficit. Following the advice of the independent scientific committee, the proportion of a river's conservation limit being met enables IFI to make recommendations on the catch options.
These recommendations are submitted to me as Minister and, following a 30-day consultation period, usually in November, a decision is made in December on the future catch options associated with each river. I have been advised that the River Suir conservation limit is fixed at 14,408 salmon. The 2014 advice is the river is only achieving 11,959 adult returning salmon, some 2,449 below the established conservation limit. This indicates that the river is meeting 83% of its conservation limit. IFI management advised that the river should be closed to harvestable fishing - commercial and recreational - and that the precautionary approach should be used. I am advised by IFI that the independent scientific committee has emphasised the value of having reliable information to provide a population estimate to support the conservation and management of wild salmon on an individual river basis. Since 2007, to provide a population index on rivers where no harvest fishery is permitted, it has been recommended that catch and release angling may be permitted on catchments achieving in excess of 65% of the conservation limit. If it exceeds that, catch and release can be used.
Previous assessments of the River Suir indicated it did not meet its conservation limit for 2008 and was open for catch and release angling only, with no commercial fisheries. The river remained below the limit for 2009. In providing scientific advice for the following year, the scientific committee applied a low exploitation rate for rod catches made in 2008 and 2009.
For 2010, it was estimated that it was meeting 96% of its conservation limit. A low exploitation rate was also applied to the rod catch in 2010 for the 2011 period. A rod catch of 1,501 salmon was reported for the Suir in 2011 and a commercial salmon fishery was also in operation. The scientific committee reviewed the 2011 rod catches and applied a medium rod exploitation rate for 2012 advice on the River Suir given the increased angling effort with this river fully open for harvesting salmon by rod, and a medium rod exploitation rate has been used for subsequent assessments.
The 2013 estimate is only 35% of the 2009-12 average rod catch and 861 salmon fewer than the previous five-year time series used in the catch advice for the 2013 season. Therefore, applying the most recent data, a significantly reduced salmon stock level is in place for 2014. Any future decision on a harvesting a fishery, commercial or recreational, can only responsibly be taken in the context of the river being above its conservation limit.
While I am advised that the best scientific and management advice is being utilised to manage the salmon stocks in the River Suir, Ireland must be particularly careful to ensure that all national and international legislation and other obligations are met in any future management regime. In that regard, as the River Suir is below its established conservation limit, the conservation imperative and the application of the precautionary principal dictate that no harvest fishery can be permitted for 2014. As already mentioned, the River Suir was previously closed for a number of years and re-opened when stocks recovered, and exploitation could take place without damaging the long-term viability of the stocks. The status of the Suir, as with all 143 salmon rivers in Ireland, will be reviewed again later this year and will continue on an annual basis.
I thank the Minister for a very comprehensive reply, which contained a lot of detail that I had tried not to go into in my contribution. However, I accept that in order to explain it, one has to go into that type of detail. I would ask that during the lead-up to the decision time, which is in November, and then the final decision in December, there is more engagement with local people involved in this aspect of fishing, but also all aspects of fishing, because there seems to be a vacuum of information and people find there is a fait accompli.
Will the Minister of State comment on the issue of there being no fish counter on the River Suir? As I said in my opening remarks, there are only 25 rivers with fish counters out of the 148, as I have it, or 143, as the Minister of State has it, salmon fishing rivers in the country. Has he any information as to whether the other rivers have fish counters? Where there are salmon fish counters, it is a clear black and white situation. The other methodologies such as the salmon red surveys and the juvenile salmon index survey are much less scientific, given the results depend on weather and many other factors, and, therefore, cannot be as accurate. The Minister of State might respond on the issue of salmon counters on the rivers that do not have them. Is any budget being provided for those and what is the current situation?
I am happy to assure the Senator that the question he raises in regard to fish counters is addressed in what I said, but I will get him the detail of how many there are and on how many rivers. I know that a significant number of rivers do not have them. What the Department relies on is the catch log book and, as it has done on other rivers, including the River Boyne, it will work with local fishermen and through other surveys during the year to find out what juniors are present. It undertakes as broad as possible an analysis and involves the local fishermen as much as possible. At the end of the day, however, if the fish are not there, or if there are not sufficient fish to make a catch, then there is no point. With regard to snap net fishermen in particular, who catch and release, this would not help them because that is not how catch and release operates. That location would then be at a disadvantage in terms of their activity.
I will ask IFI to contact the Senator directly following today's discussion. I thank him for putting this off until today so I could be here to give the issue the answer it deserves and to see if there is further progress we can make. As I said, the solution is to communicate with the fishermen, deal with them, listen to their point of view and see whether there is other analysis or extra work that can be done to analyse this and get a better figure than the counter would otherwise get.
Adoption Services Provision
As I am sure the Minister of State can imagine, given all the focus on the mother and baby homes and the issue of adoption over the past few weeks, voluntary organisations are being inundated with requests for support from adoptees and their birth relatives and the wider group of people affected by the mother and baby homes. Groups like the Adoption Rights Alliance are trying to help as many people as they can but they have been completely overwhelmed by the number of people who need assistance and who need quite sensitive support and counselling. Those involved are women who may not have talked about some of these issues for a long time, women who went through the homes or who were forced to separate from their children many years ago. Many have not told their families, their husbands or their children, and have dealt with the emotion of all of this by themselves for a long time. Now, they are reaching out for the first time and looking for someone to talk to, but the services simply are not there to help everybody who needs support.
This is the feedback I have been getting very strongly from the different groups involved. Barnardos provides a fantastic service, which is the only independent service for adopted adults and their birth relatives outside the HSE and other State organisations. However, it only has funding from the HSE for one post-adoption services post, which is obviously completely insufficient.
I tabled this matter yesterday and the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs issued a press release today referring to a number of services that are available. He referred to the HSE helpline so I rang that helpline to see whether it was a new service or an existing one. I was told it was the general HSE helpline that is in place to deal with people with different HSE issues but that it can refer people to more specific services. The press release also refers to the Connect free telephone out-of-hours professional service. I understand that service was set up for people who suffered abuse in residential institutions and, again, it would be specialised in dealing with those people who were in the industrial homes. The press release also refers to the national counselling service, which, again, is an existing HSE service which is usually to help survivors of institutional abuse.
My query is whether new services or additional posts are being put in place. The strong feedback I have had in the past week is that the existing services are not sufficient and that people are reaching out for support but not finding the services available to respond to them. In particular, because I was fortunate enough to find my mother and connect with her through Barnardos, I would stress that it has a phenomenally good service to provide people with helpline assistance but also individual one-to-one counselling, which is crucial in these situations. I was shocked to hear it only has one person as a result of cuts in recent years. The Government should step in straight away and provide it with more funding so nobody looking for help has to be turned away.
I want to raise the issue of access to birth certificates. Adopted people in England have had a right to their birth certificates since 1975 but, 40 years later, Irish adoptees still do not have that right. The Taoiseach said last week that introducing such a right in Ireland might require a referendum. I have done a lot of reading into this. I read the main Supreme Court case, which is the I.O'T v. B case, and also the article that was printed on it last week by Dr. Conor O'Mahony, who is a constitutional law expert from Cork. Dr. O'Mahony has argued very persuasively that a referendum is not needed. In fact, he has highlighted sections of the judgment in that case where the court referred to the fact there are, of course, competing rights, for example, the right to privacy of the mother, on the one hand, and the right of the child to an identity, on the other. The court said that neither right was absolute but that it was a job for the Oireachtas - the Members of this House and of the Dáil - to strike that balance. The legislation would benefit from the same presumption of constitutionality as all other legislation when it leaves the Oireachtas, and the courts would only interfere if they felt it was unreasonable. Therefore, the Supreme Court has clearly said to us, as politicians, that it is our job to legislate. I appreciate it is a sensitive issue but that has not stopped other countries from putting in place a system.
It is hard to describe to anybody the hurt, as an adoptee, that comes from not knowing who you are. I did not find my mother for 29 years and did not know my original birth name for 29 years or any of the circumstances in which I was born. It is hard to explain that gap to anybody so all I can say to the Minister of State is that there are thousands of people around the country who have those feelings every day, particularly on birthdays and at Christmas, and have been living with the pain for a long time.
It is long past time for the State to step up and help them.
The basic right of adoptees is the right to a birth certificate. We also need a proactive information, tracing and support service for adoptees and birth relatives, like the service provided by Barnardos, which acted as an intermediary in our case. Barnardos facilitates only a small number of people because it receives HSE funding for only one post. The service should be replicated on a national level so that adoptees who apply to the service for their birth certificates would be offered counselling and have the opportunity to talk through their feelings with a counsellor. If the counselling service were aware of the birth mother's intentions, circumstances and whether or not she wished to be reunited, that could be taken into account.
There has been much scaremongering over recent weeks about adopted people turning up on birth mothers' doorsteps, unwanted, in the middle of the night. We are all sensitive people. All we want to know is who we are. Some adoptees do not wish to reunite, and anyone who does is sensitive to the possibility that finding his or her mother could be a difficult experience for the mother. They appreciate that they do not know the circumstances in which they were born and that there could be great pain associated with it for their mothers. The do not want to make their mothers' lives any more difficult. This cannot be an excuse for a blanket robbery of people's rights to their identities through a ban on birth certificates which does not exist elsewhere.
When people approach birth relatives cold, it is due to the absence of a right to information through the State and proactive support. The only way people can get the information is by hiring private detectives and retracing steps. They find out what town they are from and go around the town asking people if they know Mary X who had a baby in 1973, and suddenly they are standing on the lady's doorstep or writing her a letter. If there were a proper intermediary and support service, this would not happen. A proper service would also be an invaluable support for mothers, who would have somebody to talk to. Some might still decide they do not want to reunite. Yesterday I met with one of the mothers' groups, Adoption Loss, and its members feel that the fact that mothers signed confidentiality agreements is often overstated in public debate. Adoption Loss pointed out that in most cases it worked the other way around, with mothers being forced to sign consent forms and swear oaths saying they would never try to contact their children. They did not seek confidentiality.
While I appreciate that it is a sensitive issue and needs to be handled carefully, I urge the Government to act on all the issues I have outlined. We need a comprehensive response to all this and must finally give people justice for what they have gone through.
I thank the Senator for bringing this very important issue before the Oireachtas and for the clarity with which she has presented the case and outlined her personal circumstances. She speaks on behalf of thousands of people and articulates the need for the State to meet their needs. I am taking this Adjournment matter on behalf of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Charles Flanagan.
Following the Government's announcement last week to establish a statutory commission of investigation into the mother and baby homes, the Minister has this morning announced a series of arrangements to provide public access to further information and counselling services for those needing support regarding these issues. These services are operational from today, and full details, together with an update on the cross-departmental work of establishing the commission, are available on the website of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, www.dcya.gov.ie. The Minister is conscious of the demand for information following the recent disturbing revelations about mother and baby homes. Last week, he directed his officials to work with the HSE on arrangements to ensure that the HSE national information line can assist people seeking information or details of available support. Those seeking such information may telephone the national information line on 1850 24 18 50, Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
There is also an out-of-hours professional counselling and support service where those affected can contact the Connect free telephone service and talk in confidence with a trained counsellor. Connect is an out-of-hours service which is available from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. It normally operates from Wednesday to Sunday, but is currently operating seven evenings per week as part of the response to these issues. The Connect out-of-hours service is contactable at Freefone 1800 477 477 from the Republic of Ireland and 00 800 477 477 77 from Northern Ireland and the UK. The HSE national counselling service is also available to assist those affected. It is a professional, confidential counselling and psychotherapy service that is available free of charge in all regions for adults who have experienced trauma and abuse in childhood, with priority given to adult survivors of institutional abuse. Callers to the HSE national information line will be connected to a local service.
The Government is committed to providing as much information as possible to adoptees who seek information regarding their identity. The Government fully appreciates that the desire to know one's identity, or to re-establish contact with a child, is very fundamental, human and entirely reasonable. The Minister for Children and Youth Affairs is pursuing a range of measures, both legislative and administrative, in the area of adoption information and tracing. The constitutional and legal barriers to providing access to adoption records, including birth certificates, without the consent of the birth mother give rise to the need for careful drafting of legislative proposals, and this important work is receiving priority attention from the Minister, Deputy Charles Flanagan. Any legislation in this area is subject to legal and constitutional complexities, balancing the right to identity with a parent's right to privacy where prior parental consent has not been forthcoming. The Minister is committed to going as far as possible through legislation to facilitate improved access.
A great deal can also be done operationally to support any new legislative scheme through, for example, support and counselling to address fears about giving consent to the release of records. The Minister will, as soon as possible, finalise legislative proposals and submit a general scheme and heads of the adoption (information and tracing) Bill to Government. Under the provisions of the Bill, a national tracing service will be established, the operation of which will be subject to guidelines to be set out in regulations. The Bill will also provide for the placing of the national contact preference register on a statutory basis.
Subject to Government approval, it is the Minister's intention to refer the general scheme to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health and Children for its consideration, where the competing issues can be fully debated. It is envisaged that the committee's consideration will include invitations to advocacy groups and interested parties to outline their views. The Minister has indicated that he is looking forward to having an opportunity to engage with Members on the complex issues arising in the proposed legislation. The Minister has asked me to convey his regret that he was unable to attend the Seanad and to thank Senator Power for raising this urgent and important issue. The Minister has indicated that he intends to meet with Opposition spokespersons and a number of key advocacy groups next week on the matter of mother and baby homes.
I thank the Minister of State, Deputy O'Dowd, for his reply. I appreciate that he was answering on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Charles Flanagan. Could he pass on my query about whether the information services he mentioned are additional? I hope they are, because there is an urgent need for extra services. This is the feedback I am receiving, and the Minister is probably getting similar feedback. There is an urgent need for a properly staffed helpline. Could the Minister of State pass on to him my call for additional funding for Barnardos? It has been doing this for years and has the expertise. In addition to my experience, I have had fantastic feedback from many other adoptees and birth parents who have been through Barnardos. They could not talk more highly of the service. Perhaps I will table the issue on information and tracing again with the Minister because I would like to tease through the legal issues with him. I look forward to the proposals being brought before the Joint Committee on Health and Children. Although I am not a member of the committee, I intend to attend and contribute to the process.
I assure the Senator that I will speak to the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Flanagan, and ask his private secretary to make contact with her immediately to provide the very important clarifications she is seeking.
The Seanad adjourned at 5 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 19 June 2014.