On the last occasion I was indicating to the House the depth of the support which the Progressive Democrats give to the Bill introduced by Deputy Shatter as a Private Members' Bill. This Bill is a much needed and timely reform of the law relating to adoption. The present situation which prevents abandoned children of married couples, or abandoned children whose parents may be married but cannot be traced, from becoming members of a family secure in the love, care and confidence that can only come from full membership of a family, is in our view a grave defect in our law. It is, moreover, a defect the remedy for which lies in our hands as legislators. We owe it to children now in institutions, now suffering because of the present law, now having their lives blighted, to introduce this reform and to do so now.
The Minister's contribution on the last occasion to the debate was unconvincing, unresearched, unreasoned and unfortunate for the children who will continue to suffer if he has his way in delaying reform in this area. His arguments fall into three parts.
First, he said this was an important measure which should be carefully drafted and should come from Government. That is an appallingly shallow argument. The Bill is carefully drafted. It did come from Government. The fact that it bears Deputy Shatter's name is completely irrelevant to its merits and to the judgment of this House on its terms.
Secondly, the Minister says there are some possible amendments he would like to consider. Why does he not bring forward any such amendments on Committee Stage and let the House judge their merits? They will not be any better or worse because they are made on Committee Stage rather than at a preliminary drafting stage before another Bill is introduced. I would add that this Bill is preeminently a case for allowing non-party, unwhipped voting. There is no such thing as a Fianna Fáil foundling, a Fianna Fáil orphan, a Fine Gael orphan, a Progressive Democrat orphan, a Labour Party orphan, a Workers' Party orphan, or a Democratic Socialist Party orphan. All these children have rights which do not fall to be considered in the light of party political interest. I am asking the Minister, even at this stage, to reconsider the folly and the selfishness of the position the Government are adopting on this issue, and to look at this Bill on its merits and with regard to the interests of the people it purports to protect, namely, the children who are adversely discriminated against by our present laws.
Thirdly, the two miserable examples of possible changes which the Minister gave us last week showed what is, in my view, a desperate attempt to conjure up reservations for their own sake. The suggestion that the applications for adoption orders should be made only by health boards is one of the most silly proposals for the reform of family law I have ever heard from a serious source. The effect of such a proposal would be to give health boards an effective veto over the operation of the Act in relation to any child of would-be adopters. Why not leave the matter to the courts to decide and, if you must, give the health boards a right of audience as notice-parties to the application.
I notice in the text of the Bill that provision is made for the court making other persons parties to the Bill, presumably including health boards. Therefore, there is no question of excluding them from the judicial determination of the child's interests. However, what the Minister is proposing is to give them a monopoly of decision-making power because, as I said on the last occasion, if the health boards, the chief executive officer or whoever decides this anonymously within the deepest recesses of the health board, comes to the conclusion that a particular application is without merit then the parents' and the child's interest can never get to the court. That would be a scandalous deformation of our law against the people whose interests this Bill is designed to protect and would be without any legal rationale or constitutional merit whatsoever.
Whether we continue to have health boards at all is very much open to doubt, but the Minister's suggestion that the health boards be the only possible applicants is, in my opinion, nothing short of draft. If there were a free vote in this House on that proposal, it would only have the support of a handful of Deputies, if it even got that much support.
The Minister's views on the possible adoption of married people under the age of 18 seem to be entirely theoretical, and to come from the mind of somebody who, with respect, could never have had practical experience in the implementation of family law or the consequences of adoption. When one marries one becomes part of a new family of which the married couple are heads as far as the Constitution are concerned because they are potential parents in their own right. There is no point becoming the head of one family and, at the same time, aspiring to become a juvenile member of another family. I cannot see who would want to be adopted in those circumstances or why the effects of such adoption order, if it were made, would not be achieved by some other testamentary arrangement or deed of family arrangement. I cannot see the circumstances in which that exception could have any validity. This drives me to the conclusion that that objection was put up as a stumbling block or a trip wire to try to make respectable what is fundamentally a selfish attempted denial of passage to Deputy Shatter's Bill.
The Joint Committee on Marriage Breakdown proposed that the marriage age should be raised to 18 years. Therefore, why we are proposing to go in the other direction and start making absurdly complex arrangements for people between the ages of 16 and 18 years who may or may not happen to be married, is beyond comprehension. I wonder how many marriages the Minister thinks takes place each year between people in the 16 to 18 age group. There are only a very small number, and the number who would be illegitimate and even remotely interested in being adopted must be infinitesimal. Could the Minister's suggestion benefit more than one person in a decade or even in 30 years? I think it is an artificial point, without merit and without practical importance and I believe it is not presented as a real objection to the text of Deputy Shatter's Bill.
This attitude of the Minister is very disappointing. It evidences and uncaring, selfish and politically opportunistic approach to this issue. The people who will suffer most as a result of this attitude cannot vote, cannot lobby their Deputies and do not even know who to blame for their misery. In seeking to delay reform in this area, I ask the Minister if he wants to shoulder responsibility for their misery because that is what he will be doing in political terms.
If this Bill is voted down the Government will be saying to the Opposition that they do not want them to be constructive, innovative or positive and that they should confine themselves to futile, negative point scoring in the House. The Minister for Health, in particular, should know better because, as Opposition spokesman on Health, he spent four years indulging in point-scoring and irresponsible spendthrift rhetoric. Faced with reality, many words he said about health care during that period must now stick in his throat. However, his answer to the responsible attitude of the various parties on this side of the House is to treat the Bill with offhand disdain larded with a few perfunctory compliments to Deputy Shatter for his innovation in bringing it in. That simply is not good enough and fools nobody. It amounts to a contemptuous rebuff — not for the supporters of the Bill — but for the children whose lives are, in one sense, at stake. I use that phrase guardedly because I do not like abusing language but the lives of the children who will be affected by the passage of the Bill are at stake. It ill behoves the Minister at any stage to say that he will delay reform until he can have carriage of the Bill or until he can decide whether minor, theoretical amendments which he has in mind should be introduced.
The history of adoption law in Ireland is marked by inexcusable delay and conservatism often based on extraneous motives. Initially, the Catholic Church were afraid of adoption and some extreme Catholic activists oppose this Bill as a threat to the family. If the Constitution gives pride of place to the family which it recognises as having inalienable and imprescriptible rights antecedent to positive law and if, as has been held, it must be based on marriage, is it not curious that the Catholic Church are prepared to remarry people who are still married in the eyes of the State and whose marriage the State is bound to regard as indissoluble and possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights? It is noteworthy in this context that, in limited circumstances, the Catholic Church can grant dissolution of marriage — such as the Pauline privilege — when the State cannot. There is also the problem of Church nullity decrees. What is claimed in the Constitution to be imprescriptible and antecedent to positive law is, in some cases, prescriptible by virtue of canon law — at least in the eyes of the Church — whose teaching is said to inform the wording of these articles.
If the family is such an important institution, it can be equally argued that a child has a very strong moral right to belong to an effective, loving and caring family, whatever the circumstances of his birth. You cannot say that the family is of huge importance and then say that it is irrelevant to foundlings, and children left in orphanages although they are not orphans, when they are deprived of their right to become members of a family. If it is all that important in theory it is equally important in practice. The present law prevents membership of a family being granted to certain classes of children and, therefore, it is wrong-minded to put preservation of the family as a reason for delaying the passage of this measure which is designed to accord all the privileges and natural advantages of membership of a family to those who are unjustly denied them at present.
The Bill should be debated now, not in a year's time which, as Deputy Desmond in his contribution on the second last occasion proved, would be the logical outcome of the Minister's attitude. It will be a year at least before any legislation which is not contained in Deputy Shatter's Bill can be introduced in the House. If this Bill is delayed for a year, will the Minister or anybody else be able to make up for the additional suffering, unhappiness and anxiety of the affected children? I suggest the answer to that is "of course not".
The Bill has a number of features which are debatable and the purpose of Committee Stage is to decide whether what is in it is right in the collective wisdom of the membership of the House. The great majority of the substance of the Bill is unexceptional and represents the vast consensus of the Members of the House, and therefore, should be passed. I have some doubts about section 9 in so far as it relates to costs and the same objective could be reached by different phraseology and concepts. However, that does not stop me from supporting the Bill and it does not relieve the Minister of his responsibility to support it and to bring forward amendments if he has any doubts.
Section 2 (3) of the Bill deals with the question of health boards and agencies. The treatment of health boards and agencies, as framed by Deputy Shatter, is far superior to the strange and recondite reasoning given by the Minister on the last occasion as an excuse for not supporting it. There is a provision in section 2 (1) which is unduly restrictive. I know Deputy Shatter's attitudes are liberal by disposition and that in so far as that section is restrictive, it is so because of an abundance of caution on his part to ensure that the matter will pass the Supreme Court without being challenged.
However, it is an unduly heavy onus to put on applicants who wish to have an adoption order made in their favour in respect of a legitimate child, proof of the fact that the parents of the child would not be in a position to resume their responsibilities as parents at any time before the child reaches the age of 18 years. The court should make the order, unless it considers it probable that the parents will be likely to resume their responsibilities, and the onus of proof could, with profit, be reversed in relation to that section.
The Fine Gael Party have not presented this Bill; Deputy Shatter has presented it in Fine Gael time. However, it is not a Bill based on party considerations. In this House it has received the support of Deputy Desmond of the Labour Party, Deputy Kemmy on behalf of the Democratic Socialist Party and the support of the Progressive Democrats. I presume it will also receive the support of The Workers' Party. These groups represent a very substantial variety of social outlooks and they are not joined in a pernicious plan to embarrass the State. Quite the reverse. They see themselves, when confronted by this proposed legislation, as morally and constitutionally bound to support it because not to do so is indefensible. When the arithmetic of the House finally shakes out in the way it often does, I wonder if this measure will be carried. Will Deputy Blaney or Deputy Gregory fail to turn up to support it? Will every Fianna Fáil Deputy dutifully respect the party whip and vote down the Bill. If there is a confrontation based on party lines, I appeal to the Minister, even at this late hour, not to have such a confrontation. I sincerely hope that the Minister is beaten and that the attitude exhibited by his contribution, in reply to Deputy Shatter's opening speech, is confronted by this House and rebuffed for what it is — posturing without substance.
This is not the time for ministerial effrontery, social small mindedness or political pettiness. For the sake of the children concerned, let us be generous. If we cannot be generous to each other in the House, let us at least be generous to those this Bill is introduced to protect, the children who, at present, are excluded from adoption. I reiterate the unequivocal support of the Progressive Democrats for the passage of this Bill on Second Stage and my heartfelt appeal to the Minister and the Minister of State to abandon their posturing at present and to be sufficiently open and generous to accept this Bill in the spirit in which it is proposed and supported by a diverse group of Deputies. They should stop the nonsense of saying that nothing good can come from the Opposition. This is the time to set a new tone for a new Dáil. If not, we will not become the petty, narrow-minded Opposition which that kind of behaviour might drive others to become; we will continue to be constructive but we will not let the Minister forget the inhumane, unChristian and ruthless consequences of this kind of political chicanery. I appeal to the Taoiseach over the Minister's head to change his attitude on this matter, to show a bit of common sense and to support this Bill. We emphatically support Deputy Shatter's Bill.