THERE ARE issues still to be addressed in the area of adoption between Ireland and Vietnam, Minister of State for Trade And Development Jan O’Sullivan said yesterday, but the situation had improved considerably since Hanoi ratified the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption.
On a visit to the country, Ms O’Sullivan launched a programme aimed at boosting the number of Vietnamese students who come to Ireland to study, and introduced an Ireland-Vietnam development co-operation strategy which pledges €55 million until 2015 in grant aid.
An intercountry adoption agreement between Ireland and the southeast Asian country lapsed in May 2009 and adoptions were suspended after a series of scandals relating to fraudulent adoptions in Vietnam.
Earlier this month Vietnam ratified the Hague convention, allowing Irish couples to resume adopting children from Vietnam. The ratification comes into force on February 1st.
“There is more clarity about what the issues are, and I think we can deal with some issues in the meantime. Intercountry adoption is a highly sensitive issue and we have to make sure any arrangements made are absolutely appropriate,” said Ms O’Sullivan.
Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald was planning to visit Vietnam, she said, and Vietnam’s minister of justice, Ha Hung Cuong, had confirmed this. There was also ongoing communication with Ireland’s Ambassador to Vietnam, Damien Cole.
Ireland has already passed the Adoption Act ratifying the convention, which means that only children from other Hague convention countries, or those with which there was a bilateral agreement, could be adopted into Ireland.
During her visit Ms O’Sullivan was accompanied by Michael Gaffey, deputy director-general of Irish Aid, and she visited a number of projects funded by the Irish Government development aid programme. Vietnam was an example of a country where development aid works, she said: poverty had been cut from nearly 58 per cent in the early 1990s to less than 15 per cent today.
Among the projects she visited was a grassroots initiative for community-led urban upgrades along the Red River in Hanoi, which adapts a model of community coaching and organisation developed in Ballymun, Dublin.
She also visited community facilities and irrigation schemes that help poor farmers in the north of Vietnam. She said: “Vietnam is a very dynamic country. We hope we can build on our development projects to provide greater trade and business links. Aid and trade are building on each other here in Vietnam.”
This was not about self-interest, she said, but rather about using goodwill generated by Irish Aid’s work in Vietnam to put Ireland in a better position.
One area where this was particularly relevant was education, and more than 100,000 Vietnamese students are studying abroad.
There are 27,000 students in Ireland from throughout Asia, and Enterprise Ireland hopes to double that figure in coming years, with Vietnam playing its part in boosting the numbers.