Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 11 Jun 1952

Vol. 132 No. 8

Committee on Finance. - Adoption Bill, 1952—Second Stage.

Minister for Justice (Mr. Boland)

I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. The purpose of this Bill, as stated in the Long Title, is to provide for the adoption of children. I am sure that it is not necessary for me to make any case to convince the House of the desirability of that purpose.

For a number of years there has been a growing demand for legal adoption. Numerous suggestions for legislation have been made to the Minister for Justice in this House, and resolutions calling for legislation have been passed by the Corporations of the Cities of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford, by county councils and other local authorities, by trade unions and by various other organisations. I feel sure, therefore, that the principle of legal adoption will be acceptable.

The Bill is a simple one and does not call for detailed explanation. It consists of five Parts. Part I contains the usual definitions and preliminary provisions. Part II deals with the making of adoption orders; Part III with the effects of adoption orders; Part IV with the registration of adoption societies and Part V contains miscellaneous provisions.

Part II provides for the establishment of a board which will be empowered to make adoption orders. The board will consist of a chairman and six ordinary members appointed by the Government. The chairman must be of judicial standing or be a barrister or solicitor of at least ten years' standing.

Adoption orders may be made only in respect of illegitimate and orphan children, and, subject to the exception provided in Section 19 in favour of existing adoptions, the children must be not less than six months and not more than seven years of age. An application for an adoption order may be made only by a married couple, a widow or a relative of the child and subject to exception in favour of relatives, applicants for adoption orders must be at least 30 years of age. An adoption order may not be made without the consent of the mother of the child if she is alive and of the guardian or any other person having control of the child, unless the board dispense with consent on the ground that the person concerned cannot be found or is incapable of giving consent by reason of mental infirmity. The adopters, the parents of the child and the child must all belong to the same religion. Provision is made for a special birth register for adopted children. All adopted children will be re-registered in the special register, and that register or any birth certificate issued from it will not disclose the origin of an adopted child.

Before I pass from Part II, there are two matters on which I would like to make comment. Some people may think that the provision limiting adoption to orphans and illegitimate children is too restrictive and that in some circumstances the adoption of a legitimate child who is not a full orphan should be permitted. I am advised, however, that there is a danger that the Bill would be help to be unconstitutional if it provided for the adoption of legitimate children whose parents are alive. The Constitution declares the rights and duties of parents towards their children to be inalienable, and any provision for the permanent transfer of those rights and duties, even with the consent of the parents, might be unconstitutional. The main need for adoption arises in connection with orphans and illegitimate children. The Bill provides adequately for them, and I think it is better to deal with them only than to risk making the Bill unconstitutional and perhaps shipwrecking the whole proposal.

My second comment is in respect of the provision in Section 12 that members of the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian Church, the Methodist Church and the Religious Society of Friends will be deemed to be of the same religion. That provision was included at the request of the representatives of the religions referred to. Since the Bill was introduced the House of Bishops of the Church of Ireland have informed me that they do not think it desirable that their church should be included in the provision. The section will, therefore, require amendment.

Part III, which deals with the effects of adoption orders, seeks to place an adopted child as nearly as possible in the same position as a child born in lawful wedlock to his adopters.

Part IV provides that societies may not engage in arranging adoptions, unless they are registered with the board, and it provides that the board may require a society to furnish information in regard to its activities.

Part V places restrictions on the sending of children out of the State, prohibits advertisements relating to adoption and prohibits payment in connection with adoption.

Perhaps I should make it clear that the Bill does not interfere in any way with informal adoptions. At present, without legal adoptions, many people undertake the upbringing of children other than their own. The Bill will not interfere with that, even in cases where the circumstances would prevent the making of an adoption order.

In conclusion I should like to say this. The Constitution recognises the family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law. The purpose of this Bill is not to allow the relationship of adoption to be substituted for the family, but to enable children who do not belong to a family, to secure through adoption the benefits of the family. The Bill introduces to our law the new principle of adoption and deals with relationships which are the basis of our society. In a matter like this it is better to go too slow than to go too fast, and I would ask Deputies to bear that consideration in mind when putting forward suggestions for amendment of the Bill.

General MacEoin

I must assume, speaking personally, that the Minister has got over the difficulties with which I had to contend. In the main, these difficulties were purely of a religious type. I have to assume that he has got over these difficulties because I do not believe for one moment that the Government would make these difficulties permanent. Therefore, I am assuming that he has got over these problems. Looking at the Bill, I am not satisfied that he has.

While I am in that difficulty, at the same time I do not propose to oppose the Bill in any way but I do suggest that the Bill will have to be examined with a view to seeing that it meets the requirements. The Minister says that the demand for legal adoption has been very great. It is rather significant that one of the grounds upon which the Minister himself refused to bring in legal adoption at one time was that there was no demand for it.

Mr. Boland

I do not think I ever did. I would like to be quoted on that.

General MacEoin

That is on record.

Mr. Boland

I do not think so. There were difficulties I could not get over at the time. That was all.

General MacEoin

The Minister said to the Legal Adoption Committee and he said it here in the House—I will get the reference for it——

Mr. Boland

If you do, I will withdraw what I said.

General MacEoin

I assert that such a statement was made. The agitation, therefore, was fostered to a certain extent by that Ministerial statement. When the legal adoption people came to me, they said they would be able to get the resolution carried. They have succeeded in doing that. It was a snowball resolution because, when I became Minister. I did not see any reason why legal adoption should not take place.

This legal adoption is for illegitimate and orphan children only. The difficulty about the illegitimate child is that a large number of unmarried mothers try to avoid scandal when they get into trouble. They go to Dublin or they go to some city or town in the country to avoid the publicity. They get in touch with charitable organisations. I regret to say that they are willing and ready at that stage, owing to their stress of mind, to sign any undertaking to give away their right to that child. It is true that a number of charitable organisations, not of the Catholic Faith, are prepared to take these children.

Captain Cowan

And even the Catholic Faith. Let us be fair and straight. Do not introduce a religious issue into a matter of fact.

General MacEoin

I will not take any interruption from Deputy Cowan on any point I am making. The Deputy can get up and make his own case if he wants to. I am surely entitled to say what I am saying, that is, that charitable organisations——

Captain Cowan

Of Catholic——

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputy Cowan should allow Deputy MacEoin to make his statement.

General MacEoin

Deputy Cowan would like me to make the speech he wants.

Captain Cowan

No, no.

General MacEoin

Deputy Cowan can make his own case. This is too serious a matter for a fractious little interruption of that type. I had not finished my sentence. The Deputy might at least have the manners to wait. I said that the charitable organisations—it is true that Catholic and Protestant charitable organisations equally do it—take in the child and the mother assigns her right. The legal adoption order can only take effect with the consent of the mother. When she signs that undertaking, the biggest object she has in mind is to conceal the fact of the birth. She does not at any point want to be brought into court or before this board to admit that she is the mother of that child.

Therefore, cases will arise, whether in the Catholic, Protestant or any other home that is set up, where almost every child will be an abandoned child and the consent of the mother will not be available as the Minister has said. Therefore, a mother has signed away her right to a child. For the purpose of being impartial, let us assume that it is a Protestant mother who has assigned the child to a Catholic home. That Catholic home decides to have that child adopted into a Catholic home. The judge and the board have to ask whether the consent of the mother has been got. There is no mother. The child is an abandoned child. The same thing applies in the case of a child assigned to a Protestant home. Has the Minister provided against that in his Bill? Let him answer that question. I do not want him to answer it here. Let him answer it according to his own conscience.

The orphaned child is all right. It is born in wedlock and there is no difficulty in the long certificate being available for that child, if and when required. But we have got to remember that when the legal adoption of either child takes place it will now take the name of the adopters and be reared up as MacEoin or Boland, according to the home it is in. That will be the name and anybody who says that the child is not the son or daughter of the adopters will be guilty of an offence.

The result is that the child is brought up believing itself to be the son or daughter as the case may be of these adopters. Unfortunately, some day the story will be told in the school, college or elsewhere and the matter will be thrown at the child. That child will receive a shock when it comes back to inquire from the parents what its name is.

Captain Cowan

That is one of the grounds for the Legal Adoption Bill.

General MacEoin

Will Deputy Cowan please make his own case? When that happens the child receives a shock. We do know, in fact, cases where, when these things were disclosed, there ensued such a shock that it ended in self-destruction in at least one case in recent times.

Captain Cowan

Two cases, I think.

General MacEoin

That is a serious matter and I do not know how it will be got over. The point is made that legal adoption will give a home to every child capable of being adopted. That, of course, is untrue.

In Britain they have legal adoption for a considerable number of years. The chairman of the Royal Commission that set it up said on several occasions that it was a failure. Although the Act has been amended four times in Britain, it is admitted that each time it was a failure. The Legal Adoption Society in England assert it is a failure but they both put forward different causes. The chairman and his committee said that the reason it was a failure was because the regulations were not strict enough. They are both agreed that it is a failure, but they attribute the failure to different causes.

The number of children capable of being adopted in Great Britain is very large. One particular society has 5,000 children in its home and it is rather astonishing that out of that number only 137 were capable of being adopted. illegitimate children. Of that number 71 were not trained enough for adoption, that is they were not seven months old. That meant that only 66 children were trained enough for adoption. Of these, 17 had been offered to would-be adopters. Twenty-two were serving a probationary period with adopters with a view to finding out if both parties got on well together. This meant that only 27 out of 5,000 were left for parents. I will cite the conditions that this home lays down here and now.

Captain Cowan

Will the Deputy say what sort of children make up the 5,000?

General MacEoin

They are all in the one home run by the Church of England.

Captain Cowan

I did not want to raise that point. Are the majority of them legitimate?

General MacEoin

They are illegitimate children and orphans—the type that will be covered under this Bill.

The Church of England lays down the following conditions for the would-be adopters. The husband and wife intending to adopt a child must both be in good health, have ample means and be practising members of the Church of England. They must get a certificate from their Rector saying that they are members of his Church; they must get a certificate from two vestry men and they must get a recommendation from the local probation officer. Strange as it may seem the number of people in the Church of England who would be able to fulfil these conditions is very few. Deputy Cowan can try to disprove that if he wishes.

Captain Cowan

I am very much surprised if what the Deputy says is true.

General MacEoin

The document from which I am quoting is one in favour of legal adoption and one showing the difficulties that have to be contended with. The only reason I am quoting from this document is to show that if the Church of England lays down these regulations and takes the care which they are perfectly entitled to take, it is not too much to ask that we should take the same care and that we should see to it that our children who have got the gift of faith and the heritage of faith are not going to have this gift taken from them.

Captain Cowan

Does not this Bill ensure that?

General MacEoin

I am asking the Minister whether or not he is satisfied that it does.

Captain Cowan

It absolutely does.

General MacEoin

I do not think it does. I want to make it clear that the adopters must be of the same faith as the mother. Take the case of an unmarried mother who comes to the City of Dublin, Cork or Limerick to conceal her disgrace from her neighbours. To all intents and purposes, her child is an abandoned child.

Captain Cowan

But an abandoned child under this Bill will be brought up as a Catholic.

An Ceann Comhairle

Would Deputy Cowan reserve his remarks for his own speech?

Captain Cowan

I am only asking the Deputy a question. I am not interrupting.

An Ceann Comhairle

They sound like interruptions to me.

General MacEoin

And they sound like interruptions to the speaker. I was pointing out that conditions are laid down and care taken in the matter of adoption by the Church of England. I do not want anybody to say that the Minister, through this Bill, is doing something he should not do if he takes equally good care.

Captain Cowan

He will.

General MacEoin

I am not satisfied that this Bill meets these requirements. A board will be set up which will have the power of signing away the rights of a child. Even though there is only an infant in question, his rights under the Constitution should be guaranteed. Yet, the child is going to be signed away by an order of a court—not an open court—not in accordance with the Constitution. I am not going to go into the constitutional side of the matter again; I must assume that the Minister has made arrangements to cover it. I will approach the Bill as an ordinary layman. I wish the Bill every success. Let me be clear on that point, but I want the House to realise that if they pass it they should not expect that it will do everything they want it to do, that it will make legal adoption something that can happen overnight, and that there will be no difficulty about it.

I had decided to go into a lot of detail, but I feel that it is better not to do so. The Minister and the Government must have satisfied themselves that the Bill protects the interests of our youngest citizens. Where a mother, under the stress of circumstances, signs a document signing away her child, I do not believe there is any law that the Dáil can pass which will make that signing-away legal. During my term of office as Minister, I found cases in which the mother of the child turned up.

In one particular case she was happily married in America. She told her husband about her first lapse and it was decided that the place for that child was in the bosom of the new family. That child had to be recovered for that mother and for that family. Failure to do so would have created a spiritual and mental worry upon that woman that you could not get over. The result was that we had to get that child for her and I am glad to say that that child is now in the normal family that it ought to be in with its own mother. The moment this Bill is passed and that adoption order is made that mother, under the law as it will be passed, cannot get that child back under any circumstances. But remember this, that even though she was an unmarried mother, she constitutes the home for that child, she and that child constitute the family, she is responsible before God for bringing that child into the world, she is responsible for its well-being and training to bring it back to the Almighty that gave it to her, and that there is no law that can be passed that will take away that right from her.

If this Bill has got over that I am satisfied. I must assume that it has when the Minister has brought it in. I am aware that a committee of the bishops met and decided certain matters but what I am not satisfied about is that this Bill meets the requirements they laid down. However, if the Minister says that they have, then I will accept that.

Captain Cowan

Should they not say themselves whether it met their requirements or not?

General MacEoin

Will Deputy Cowan make his own speech and cease from interrupting? The bishops have in a very positive way said legal adoption is not contrary to Catholic teaching.

Captain Cowan

We all knew that for years.

General MacEoin

Will the Deputy say the Apostles' Creed and say that he knew it, too.

Captain Cowan

We all knew it. Every enlightened Catholic knew that.

General MacEoin

Are you finished? If the Minister says that he is satisfied that he has met all the requirements of the Hierarchy in that I am satisfied. When he has that done I wish every success to the Bill, but I trust that in 12 months' time or in less than 12 months we will not have an amending Bill and when that has been passed, another one, so that we will start amending and chipping and chopping until we will not know where we are and with every step will be one step further on.

I am glad that the Minister has been able to do what I failed to do, what he failed to do himself for a considerable length of time and what every That 137 was made up of orphans and Minister for Justice in this State failed to do. If he has succeeded in overcoming these difficulties I say: "Well done." There is nothing that I can say on the Committee Stage that would be helpful because the Minister himself must take the advice of his advisers, his legal advisers and his administrative advisers in the Department who have a great deal of experience in this matter. They know all the difficulties fairly well. There is not a difficulty to be contended with that they are not aware of. With these few remarks I wish the Bill success.

Mr. McGrath

I would like to congratulate the Minister on bringing this long-overdue Bill before the House. This Bill will bring happiness to thousands of homes in this country. People have adopted children and looked upon them as their own for many years but always with the dread that something was going to happen that would cause them to lose those children. This Bill will ensure that such people will be protected from any such danger.

While congratulating the Minister on bringing in this Bill we must congratulate the Adoption Society of Ireland for their work and their persistence in going through the country and organising public opinion to such an extent that everybody who listened to them really believed the necessity for such a Bill. This body of voluntary workers went to different parts of the country. I met them down in the City of Cork where I attended their meetings. I never saw a band of workers who had anything so much at heart as these people had this idea of adoption. One of the greatest workers among them was a man who had a family of his own. He was fighting the cause of people with adopted children although this problem did not arise for him personally.

When we saw in the newspapers the statement of the Catholic Hierarchy that legal adoption was not against Catholic teaching, we felt assured that there would be no difficulty in putting this Bill through the Dáil. The Minister is not taking any plunge in the dark. He knows what he is doing. I have here a copy of the Cork Examiner, dated February 8th, 1951, in which the last speaker, Deputy MacEoin, is reported as saying that no parliamentary draftsman had yet been found capable of drafting a Bill that would meet the requirements of the ordinary Christian State. That was in reply to questions put to him at the Fine Gael Ard-Fheis. When listening to his speech just now I got the impression that he was trying to discover all the impediments he could to this Bill and at the same time he said that he wished it to go through the House and wished it good luck. Notwithstanding that he was endeavouring to point out all the harm it would do.

He was speaking about religion. It is very clear in Section 12 that the adopters will have to be of the same religion as the child. He also spoke of abandoned children. It is agreed between all denominations that foundlings will be regarded as belonging to the Catholic Church, being the predominant religion in this country. I do not want to take up too much time in dealing with this Bill, but I have a good deal of experience of people who have adopted children and who cherish them very often more than other children are cherished by their natural parents. The reason is, I believe, that in the case of adopters they generally have only one child and they pour all their affection on that one child, where as in the ordinary family where there are several children love is shared around between them equally. In the case of an adopted child, in practically all cases, the love is centred on one child. People have said to me that the blood tie is something that they do not think of. They regard the adopted child as their own and love it as if it were their own. Their one dread is that, after years of care and attention and love, the child may be taken from them. I do not think there would be any justice in that. No matter what Deputy MacEoin may say, if a child is left and abandoned practically, an illegitimate child or an orphan, I do not think there would be any justice in taking it from the adopters. It would be all wrong that the people who neglected that child for five, six, seven or ten years could have the right to take that child.

This Bill will make the child legally the child of the adopters in every possible way. I know a case in Cork where two pretty comfortable people adopted a child and wanted to make provision in their will that, if they died, the child would get their property. The solicitor pointed out to them that if the three of them were travelling in a motor car and met with an accident and if the child lived after the two of them had died, the relatives of the child would be the next-of-kin and not the relatives of the adopters. Difficulties like that will be safeguarded against in a Bill such as this because the child will be the legal child of the adopters.

Many of us who are on boards of assistance and other boards know the numbers of children that are boarded out to people who are paid a certain sum for keeping them. We know that after a certain number of years, when the child goes over the age up to which a sum for maintenance is paid, many of those people keep the child if the board considers that they are suitable people to have the care of the child. That child grows up believing that he is the child of those people. Like the people who are not paid in respect of the child, in a great many cases they show the same affection for that child as they would for their own child.

I have met cases of boys who were seeking jobs and who had been reared in such homes. I met one foster mother who came to me crying that she could not show the birth certificate to her adopted child. She said to me: "He believes that he buried his father two years ago and that I am his mother and I cannot disillusion him." This Bill will remedy a lot of injustice in such cases. I am sure everybody will agree that the punishment should not be placed on the child, who has had nothing at all to do with the illegitimacy. Why should that be passed on to the child? The Legal Adoption Society claim that there is no illegitimate child; that there are illegitimate parents. There is a certain amount to be said in favour of that viewpoint.

The Minister said a while ago that children who were not orphans or illegitimate could not come under the Bill. I know of one particular case where a marriage was broken up very early and the child is living with people who adopted her and with whom she has been for about seven years. They are an ideal Catholic family. I wonder could the Minister do anything under the Bill to cover adoptions that have already taken place. If children have been adopted for a certain number of years by people who can be vouched for by local clergy and everyone else, it is a terrible hardship on them now to find that they will not come under this Bill. I realise the dangers of such a clause if it would allow adoption in future. I could very well see the possibility of some parents even selling their children to good homes for a certain amount of money but, where children have been adopted already over a number of years, would the Minister consider whether he can do anything in their case? I am sure there are cases in addition to the one I have in mind.

Deputy MacEoin was talking about the necessity for this Bill. From a paper published by the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, I understand that for each ten-year period from 1900 to 1945 (with the last ten years considered as 1933 to 1945) the average annual registration of illegitimates was as follows: 1,468, 1,595, 1,706, 1,893, 2,124.

There is plenty of scope for a Bill such as this and such a Bill will bring great happiness to many people. It will allow all those children to stay in the country, having been reared in the country, whereas at present they have to fly out of the country because they have no name or anything else and feel ostracised. I hope the Bill will get a speedy passage through the House.

Captain Cowan

I am one of those who are delighted at the introduction of this Bill by the Minister. I fought my campaign at the last general election on a number of issues. One of them was the mother and child scheme without a means test and the second was an Adoption Bill. I made it specific and clear that I stood for those two things.

It is just as well that the House should consider how the Adoption Bill became a matter of paramount political importance. We are one of the few civilised countries in the world that have no adoption laws. Social workers and members of the judiciary from time to time have expressed their view in regard to this matter. The late Judge Gavan Duffy, who was one of our greatest judges, an outstanding judge, in fact, I think, the greatest judge that this country has produced, certainly since the establishment of the Free State and perhaps for a long period prior to that, said that an Adoption Act was a most urgently needed law reform.

Many of us came across this problem from many different points of view. I came across it first and foremost as a solicitor practising in Dublin.

In my experience, I have been connected with the adoption of hundreds of children, every one of whom was adopted within a few weeks of birth, adopted by a society or societies approved by the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin. Having come up against these practical situations, I could never understand why there was some objection to the introduction of a Bill which would put adoption under some legal control. During the time that the present Minister was Minister for Justice in a previous Government, in my capacity as a private citizen and as the adviser of certain people who had adopted children, I had asked him, personally and by letter written by me in my capacity as solicitor, to introduce a Legal Adoption Bill. When I became a member of this House, supporting the inter-Party Government. I availed of every opportunity to ask the then Minister to introduce a Legal Adoption Bill and I co-operated with the adoption society, and with Deputy McGrath who was honoured by the society by being asked to introduce a Private Members' Bill dealing with adoption. We pressed the then Minister, Deputy MacEoin, to introduce an Adoption Bill and we understood, and the society understood, from him that such a Bill would be introduced at some time in the near future.

Great was our surprise when it was announced in this House, not by Deputy MacEoin but by Deputy O'Higgins, if I remember correctly, that the Government had decided not to introduce the Bill and the rumour went around this House, and it was freely stated in the corridors of this House, that the Government had taken that line because the Minister for Justice was advised by the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin that it would be wrong to introduce a Children's Adoption Bill. I never believed that. I could not for one moment believe that any person with any knowledge of Catholicity would give such advice to a Minister or a Government. I am glad to know that I was right in the view I held because subsequently when these Deputies who were interested in this subject said: "We will test the matter," and when we co-operated with the Legal Adoption Society and had a Legal Adoption Bill drafted and introduced into this House by Deputies McGrath and Dockrell representing the two biggest Parties in this House— representing, I may say, every Party in the House because it was with our consent and approval that these two Deputies were selected to present that Bill to the House—we had an announcement from the Hierarchy that that Legal Adoption Bill was not contrary to Catholic teaching. I think it is unfair and improper that it should be rumoured around that the failure to bring in that Bill was due to the fact that the Archbishop of Dublin had condemned an Adoption Bill under any circumstances. I think that was entirely unfair to the Archbishop of Dublin.

Mr. Morrissey

Who said that?

Captain Cowan

Deputy Morrissey has only just come in and I have got to repeat myself.

Mr. Morrissey

Oh, no.

Mr. Rooney

I was about to ask for the proof.

Captain Cowan

I said that when Deputy O'Higgins, who was a Minister of the last Government, came into this House and said the Government had decided not to introduce an Adoption Bill, it was whispered and rumoured around the corridors of the House that that was done because the Minister for Justice had been advised by the Archbishop of Dublin that an Adoption Bill should not be brought in.

Mr. Morrissey

It is only a whisper and rumour now, not a statement.

Captain Cowan

I want to say further that it was so stated by the then Government, by the Minister for Justice, that the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin would not stand for an Adoption Bill.

Mr. Morrissey

By whom?

Captain Cowan

By the Minister for Justice.

Mr. Rooney

No such thing.

Captain Cowan

I am asserting, and let Deputy Morrissey, who was a Minister of that Government, deny it if he wants to——

Mr. Morrissey

I do.

Mr. Rooney

This is not the place to bandy round the Archbishop's name.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order!

Captain Cowan

I am not bandying round his name. I am dealing with a matter of principle. When I read in the paper some weeks ago that a committee of the bishops had considered this, that that committee was presided over by the Archbishop of Dublin and that the committee said there was no objection from a Catholic point of view to an Adoption Bill, I knew that that committee was asserting and stating what was established Catholic teaching. I think if it was wrong to assert that there was an objection to an Adoption Bill, that that should be scotched now.

Captain Giles

The Red Cardinal is doing that now.

Captain Cowan

That is the sort of thing that should be scotched now. We in the adoption society and the Deputies who are in favour of legal adoption, said: "We shall test this; we shall prepare a Bill and introduce it. We shall see if that Bill will be condemned"; because we were satisfied that it could not be condemned. We had provided in the Bill, so far as we could, every safeguard that could be given to children—not only Catholic children but children of other religions. Every safeguard we could think of, we put into the Bill. The Minister decided that the Government would take over the Bill and introduce it. The Minister has introduced a better Bill than we could draft because, as private Deputies, in the preparation of that Bill we were limited by the rules of this House as to the sort of Bill we could bring in. We were limited to making that Bill a function of the judiciary. As private Deputies, we could not set up the sort of board the Minister sets up. We had to limit our Bill to make it a function of the judiciary so as to keep it in order and so that it might be moved in this House. I am glad to say that the Minister took over that Bill. He has provided much better machinery than we could provide because we were limited by the rules of procedure of this House. The Minister has introduced a Bill which has been welcomed by every organisation concerned with the question of the adoption of children. It is not a simple matter at all.

Deputy MacEoin referred to the shock that a child gets when it finds out for the first time—perhaps when it is 19, 20, 21 or may be even older— that it is illegitimate and is not the child of the parents it is generally supposed to be. That is a tremendous shock. I have seen it myself during the emergency. Time after time, parents came to me in my professional capacity and asked me to prepare a statutory declaration to enable their child to get a permit to travel abroad. I have seen these men and women, often old people, coming in and seeing me privately and telling me about this child they had adopted that was not their child but that it always believed that he or she—because I have had to do it for both sexes—was their child. They could not bring themselves to tell the child the position and they asked me to do it. It was not the sort of job that I liked to do. It was very difficult and very touching. I do not want to experience that again—and I will not experience it and nobody else will experience it when this Bill is in operation. I have had to prepare statutory declarations that this child known as A.B. was, in fact, C.D., and then the passport was issued not in the name A.B. but in the original C.D. That was the shock. It was the very serious shock that, in my knowledge, led to one suicide and one attempted suicide. The unfortunate person who attempted suicide has been in a mental hospital since. These are incidents within my own limited experience of the sort of shock that came about. Deputy MacEoin talks about that shock as if it were not one of the reasons why charitable organisations and Deputies of this House have, for many years, been trying to get an Adoption Bill made law. This Bill will help to put an end to that type of shock and those processes of self-destruction to which he referred.

We had the other case—the blackmail case—to which Deputy MacEoin referred. I have seen that, too. A child is handed over, abandoned, in fact, to decent parents who are pretty well-off. They came to love that child. The original mother knew where the child was. She knew the affection that was poured out on that child by the adopting parents. Time after time, she went to those parents and demanded money in sums from £10 to £100. She blackmailed them to get that money. If they did not pay it up she threatened that she would take legal proceedings to recover her child from them. Nobody could say that that sort of conduct should be permitted.

Unfortunately, it has happened time and time again. That is why, when I go to a society to ask the society to adopt a child, one of the rules that society makes—and that society is a society approved of by the Archbishop of Dublin—is that the mother will not know who adopts the child. The child is handed over. The necessary moneys are handed over to the society to provide for the adoption of that child. The one strict rule is that the mother will not know who adopts that child because those societies know the dangers of blackmail and they are doing their best to provide against it.

Deputy MacEoin mentioned—although subsequently he corrected it—children who are adopted by Protestant societies. I interrupted and said that they are also adopted by Catholic societies. I have never seen a child of one religion adopted by a society of another religion. The majority of the children who are adopted in Dublin are Catholic children adopted by Catholics or by Catholic organisations. There is no question of proselytism at all. I hope that will be made clear in the discussions on this Bill.

Deputy MacEoin read out to us the experience of some Protestant society in England. I do not know why that was read out by him. I must say that I did not get to the bottom of it.

Mr. Rooney

He read out the precautions.

Captain Cowan

He read out the very wise precautions that were adopted, precautions that, in fact, are adopted by our Catholic societies here who adopt children. They ensure that the adopting parent is a parent of good character and that every qualification mentioned by Deputy MacEoin is there. These are only proper precautions to be taken by such a society. I am satisfied that the board which the Minister has suggested in this Bill, and that will be set up under this Bill, will take those precautions, and more precautions if necessary, to see that those children will get a decent start in life.

We had the experience within the past few years of children being adopted by people in America. We can make no legal provisions here for the adoption of children but children were adopted from different homes— institutions known as homes—throughout the country by people from America. We could see these children being taken out, being placed in an aeroplane and going right across to the United States of America to be adopted by parents of whom we had no knowledge except the amount of money they might have for that purpose. There were no precautions in regard to that adoption and nothing could be done about it. The children could be adopted, flown across the Atlantic to America and kept there where they would be under no control of our Minister or of our courts. Under this Bill, they will be under the control of the Minister and of the board set up under this Bill when it becomes an Act, and under the control of this House, if needs be.

Mr. Rooney

Does the Deputy mean that the practice will be stopped?

Captain Cowan

Yes, the Bill prohibits it. The Bill makes provision for adoption in accordance with the provisions of the Bill.

Mr. Rooney

That does not stop the practice.

Captain Cowan

It will stop the practice effectively.

Mr. G. Boland

It makes it illegal.

Captain Cowan

As the Minister says, it makes it illegal—it cannot be done. That is a very desirable thing.

Parliamentary Secretary to the Government (Mr. Lynch)

It proposes imprisonment if it is contravened.

Captain Cowan

This is a most desirable Bill. It is a Bill which every Deputy should be delighted to welcome. It is a Bill which Deputy MacEoin said he welcomed, but he set out to throw an enormous amount of cold water on it, for what purpose I do not understand. The board which the Minister will set up will be an experimental board. I do not know, but I take it that he has decided on the numerical membership of the board on what I might term the religions of the country. I take it that the Minister will endeavour to see that the viewpoints of the different religions are represented on the board. I am perfectly certain that no matter what membership the board is comprised of they will give every consideration to matters related to the religion of the child or the religion to which the child might be expected to belong.

This is a very important advance in our social legislation. As I said, we are one of the few civilised countries that have no adoption laws. We are now by this Bill making provision for these laws. I am glad the Minister has introduced the Bill. It is much more satisfactory that he should do it than it should be done by private Deputies, but the matter was so important that private Deputies on all sides of the House were determined to bring in such a Private Members' Bill if it were not done by the Government.

Deputy MacEoin said he had no suggestions for the Committee Stage. I have no suggestions for the Committee Stage either, except one in which I support Deputy McGrath, that where there has been an adoption prior to the passing into law of this Bill, where that adoption has been successful, where the character of the adopting parents is beyond reproach, where the child is happily living with the family, some small amendment will be introduced into the Bill to legalise that particular adoption. That is the only amendment I will have to make to this Bill which must commend itself to every Deputy.

Mr. Morrissey

Deputy Cowan is certainly not going to leave anybody under any misapprehension about this Bill. He wants to make it perfectly clear that, while the Minister may have adopted this child, he is the true father——

Captain Cowan

No.

Mr. Morrissey

——and that this Bill would never have seen the light and there would not have been any legal adoption were it not for Deputy Cowan.

Captain Cowan

I did not say that.

Mr. Morrissey

Not only that, but he has taken steps to see that the proper viewpoint, not only of the Catholic Church, but of all the other churches in this State, is being duly and fully safeguarded.

Captain Cowan

I did my best to see that.

Mr. Morrissey

I have not a shadow of doubt about it. The Deputy is having a grand time putting up skittles just for the pleasure of knocking them down. Anybody coming into the House and listening to the Deputy would come to the conclusion that this Bill was almost as controversial as the Finance Bill.

Captain Cowan

Not a bit controversial.

Mr. Morrissey

Listening to the Deputy, one could come to no other conclusion. If everybody in the House except the Deputy were opposing this Bill he could not have delivered himself more forcibly. We have often said in this House over the years that there was one great drawback to the House meeting at 10.30 in the morning instead of 3 p.m. and that was that certain Deputies would be much more inclined to talk to the Press gallery for the evening papers than to the matter under consideration.

Captain Cowan

I was late for that.

Mr. Morrissey

Not a bit.

Captain Cowan

I did not think of it.

Mr. Morrissey

The Deputy, of course, cannot resist using any stick presented to him or with which he can present himself to beat this side of the House.

Captain Cowan

No.

Mr. Morrissey

It has often been said that there is no greater driving force than spite.

Captain Cowan

I would not understand that.

Mr. Morrissey

The Deputy would not. This House has been established for 30 years and we have had a lot of legislation in that time. The present Government have been in office for 20 years of that time, but all the blame for not bringing in a Legal Adoption Bill until now must be put on the Government which was there for three years.

Captain Cowan

I did not put it exactly that way.

Mr. Morrissey

I am stripping the Deputy's eloquent language and bringing it down to the bare facts. Nobody knows better than the Deputy — the Minister knows it and will not deny it —that there were difficulties in getting a satisfactory Bill and these difficulties had to be surmounted if for no other reason than to make certain that when the Bill did come before the House and finally became an Act it would be operated in the best possible spirit by everybody concerned.

Captain Cowan

I think Deputy McGrath and Deputy Dockrell surmounted the difficulties by introducing the Private Members' Bill. They helped to resolve them quickly.

Mr. Morrissey

If the Deputy wants to tell us he put a pistol to someone's head——

Captain Cowan

No.

Mr. Morrissey

I have a little knowledge of the background, and I say that if the Private Members' Bill had never been introduced by Deputy Cowan, Deputy Dockrell, and Deputy McGrath, I believe the Minister would have introduced his Bill anyway.

Captain Cowan

I hope that is right.

Mr. Morrissey

The Minister may have adopted it, but there is the true father.

Captain Cowan

We made it an issue and we succeeded.

Mr. Morrissey

What is really hurting Deputy Cowan is (1) that the Minister brought in the Bill and (2) that it is an unopposed Bill welcomed by all sides of the House.

Parliamentary Secretary to the Government (Mr. Lynch)

The introduction of this Bill is an outstanding example of the realisation by Deputies of their true function in being members of this House. Deputy Morrissey in describing Deputy Cowan as the father of the Bill was possibly exaggerating.

Mr. Morrissey

No. I said that Deputy Captain Cowan was claiming to be the true father of the Bill, which is quite a different thing.

Mr. Lynch

I will say that Deputy Captain Cowan had quite a lot to do with the introduction of the Bill.

Mr. Morrissey

That is about the only blemish that is on it.

Mr. Davin

And the Parliamentary Secretary dare not say otherwise or we would put them out of office.

Mr. Lynch

If the Deputy would like me to relate the history of the Bill up to this stage I will do so and I will show that Deputy Captain Cowan, Labour Deputies and Fine Gael Deputies all had something to do with it.

On the formation of the adoption society individual Deputies were canvassed both inside and outside the House and succeeded in forming branches of the society in different centres throughout the country and in convincing other Deputies, if they were in need of convincing, that there was dire necessity for the introduction of such a measure. Those Deputies who were returned here in 1948 voluntarily formed a committee. That committee frequently met the representatives of the adoption society and the representatives of other kindred societies. There were several meetings and several interviews with Deputy MacEoin when he was Minister for Justice. The committee believed that their efforts were meeting with some measure of success until the Fine Gael Ard-Fheis of 1951, when the then Minister for Justice, Deputy MacEoin, made a speech giving the reasons why it was impossible to introduce a Bill and stating also that it was impossible for any parliamentary draftsman to frame a measure which, in the words of the then Minister, "would meet the requirements of the ordinary Christian State."

Deputy M.E. Dockrell, Deputy Larkin and other Deputies from both sides of the House refused to believe that statement. Shortly after that the then Attorney-General, in the course of the inaugural debate at the King's Inns, made what might be described as a more legalised case for the Minister's statement a few days previously in trying to establish why it was impossible legally to draft a Bill that would meet with Christian requirements and based on Christian principles.

As I said, Deputies refused to believe that it was impossible and with the assistance of the adoption society a private Bill was drafted. I think the drafting of that measure was almost completed before the change of Government. That Bill was subsequently introduced and, as everybody knows, it was then taken over by the present Minister for Justice as a Government measure. Deputy Captain Cowan is quite right when he refers to the difficulties that existed in relation to the drafting of a satisfactory Bill by private Deputies. Certain restrictions tended to make the private Bill more unwieldy than the present measure. It required a rather involved process of going before the courts and the formation of societies applying to the courts for official recognition.

Now, when the Minister took over the Bill he was able to set up this board which had the desired flexibility that would obviate the necessity of court applications and obviate also the delays that would occur as a result of such applications in the making of adoption orders.

I think it is right to say that this is social legislation in its truest sense. It is social legislation of which this House may well feel proud. It is very easy to describe Bills increasing old age pensions and children's allowances as social measures and to welcome them as benefiting the people, but in the strict social sense I think this measure will benefit the people and prove to be a credit to the legislators of this State, more beneficial to the people than all the monetary social legislative measures that have been enacted hitherto.

Deputy MacEoin naturally finds himself now in a rather difficult position. In his opening sentences to-day he welcomed the Bill and he followed up that welcome by endeavouring to throw as much cold water as he could on the Bill. Indeed, he almost prophesied that it would be a flop. He hoped, with his tongue in his cheek, that there would be no amendments. I do not anticipate that there will not be amendments. I do not anticipate that fresh legislation will not be introduced at some time in the future. It is almost impossible to provide in such a Bill against every contingency that is likely to arise in connection with an application for the adoption of a child or to make provision governing every case in which it is desirable an adoption order should be made.

I need only point to the Adoption Acts enacted in other countries in the past. In Canada there is a series of Adoption Acts which are masterpieces of parliamentary draftsmanship. Even though the first was an outstanding measure of its kind and was believed to be as perfect and as watertight as it could be, the Government of Canada ultimately found it necessary to introduce several amendments. The same is true of England. There we had a series of Adoption Acts, each one sealing up gaps that were apparent in the original Act.

I do not think the Minister claims for one moment that this measure is completely watertight and that it will meet every case and every contingency likely to arise in connection with the making of adoption orders. I believe that the Minister knows that a start had to be made some time and he has made a fairly good start with this measure. Because this Bill has the support of so many Deputies and because it is about to receive the unanimous approval of the House, I hold that it is a Bill which must be required in many parts of the country. If that were not so, it would have been impossible to have formed here what I describe as the inter-Party Committee of Deputies to put through this legislation originally.

Despite that unanimous support, a leading article appeared in the Irish Independent about five or six weeks ago denouncing the introduction of this Bill. That leading article passed almost unnoticed. I thought there would have been a clamour by the adoption society and other kindred societies which desire to have this legislation enacted. To illustrate the type of mind behind this article I think I ought to read a few paragraphs for the House:—

"There is a moral to be learned from the introduction of the Adoption Bill. Little has to be said of the measure itself. It sets up a steam-hammer to crush a nut."

I do not think I need comment on the nuts this steam-hammer will have to crack, but the enactment of this piece of legislation will certainly bring joy to many a household throughout the country. The leading article says:—

"An unwieldy and possibly costly body is to be established to make adoption orders instead of vesting the jurisdiction in the Circuit Court."

The whole reason why jurisdiction was not vested in the Circuit Court was that such a system would have been costly and unwieldy as well. The reason that this body was set up — a body which I do not believe will be costly — was to make the system of making adoption orders more flexible and one of which people could more cheaply and easily avail. The leading article continues:—

"Admittedly, the Bill contains all reasonable safeguards against the possible abuse of the system of adoption. Having been enacted, it is safe to prophesy that little more will be heard of the Bill. It scarcely touches the Irish people.

The moral to which we have referred is that it pays to make a clamour. There was no real demand for this Bill from the public or from any considerable section of the public. The case was made for it by a small section, which clamoured loudly and persistently for this so-called legal reform, and the Government, putting aside infinitely more urgent business, set its draftsmen and its printers to work and yielded to the pressure."

I do not know if there was ever a greater case of sour grapes in the journalistic life of this country, but it would be hard to beat this one. The Independent obviously approaches this matter from a purely political point of view and begrudges this Government their achievement in bringing, in being bold enough, if you like, to bring this piece of legislation before the House.

Mr. Rooney

Why "bold enough"? Are you ashamed of it?

Mr. Lynch

Somebody was very reluctant to do it for over three and a half years when the clamour was much more persistent.

General MacEoin

Thirty years.

Mr. Lynch

It does not matter. I am contending that there must be some political reason for this leading article in the Independent. Whether the need for the Bill has existed for three years or 30 years, the fact is that the real demand for it made itself apparent only in the last five or seven years when the Legal Adoption Society and other societies of a kindred nature were established. We now have this Bill in its Second Stage in the Dáil and I think it has the almost 100 per cent. goodwill of the other side of the House, with a few reservations on the part of Deputy General MacEoin. Subject possibly to a few minor amendments there is no reason why the Bill should not be enacted within a couple of weeks and let us hope that it will. If it becomes apparent in future that other amendments are desirable — as we anticipate may happen — let us deal with whatever hard cases turn up and introduce amendments, thus sealing up the Act and making it as good as we possibly can.

Mr. Rooney

Appreciating the purposes for which the Bill has been introduced, I heartily welcome it. It meets with the unanimous approvel of the House. Efforts have been made by Deputy Cowan and to a lesser extent by the Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Lynch, to make us believe that although Deputy MacEoin welcomed the Bill he proceeded to throw cold water on it. Instead of that he only pointed out the various problems which will present themselves. He pointed out the very elaborate precautions which the Church of England has taken to ensure the achievement of the purposes for which the English legal adoption system was designed.

The Parliamentary Secretary tried to claim credit for the present Government in this matter. Let them have any credit which is due to them, but I believe that the real credit is due to the Legal Adoption Society, which did all the spadework and put forward the various problems for the consideration of the public representatives who were actively interested. Then the results of all the spadework done by the society was codified to enable a Bill of this nature to be presented to the House in the form of a Private Deputy's Bill coming unanimously from all sides of the House. Therefore Deputy Lynch should not go too far in claiming credit for the Bill, as credit is also due to the society.

Mr. Lynch

Did I not make that perfectly clear?

Mr. Rooney

You did not give them as much credit as I believe they are entitled to. The Parliamentary Secretary stated — and rightly — that this problem has been very much in the public eye for the past six or seven years, but listening to Deputy Cowan a few minutes ago, one would imagine that the problem presented itself only in 1948. He then tried to blame the previous Administration for not having succeeded in bringing a suitable Bill through the House, but we must realise that during that period there was a Fianna Fáil Minister, and that the problem was put to him. There probably were difficulties which caused him to fail to bring suitable legislation through the House. It was a matter which was fully considered in all its aspects, and we have reached unanimity. I feel that it is rather unfortunate that some of the previous speakers have tried to bring controversy into the debate considering that the Bill has been unanimously accepted and has the blessing of all sides of the House.

Mr. MacCarthy

I rise only to support Deputy McGrath's appeal that successful existing adoptions should be made effective in law. Deputies from time to time in their contacts with the people get knowledge of very intimate things and we know that now and then the question of the certification of names and births hurts the susceptibilities of children who do not understand their status in the homes in which they live and where they take part in the work and affection of the family. I would join in the appeal to the Minister to examine that aspect of the case. Adoptions which have existed over years and have proved successful in fact should be made effective in law.

Mr. Byrne

I wish to support the Bill and I am glad that it has the almost unanimous approval of the House. I remember that only five short years ago it was almost impossible to get 20 people to attend a public meeting in connection with this matter.

I move the adjournment of the debate.

Debate adjourned.