Ireland has one of the highest rates of foreign adoptions in Europe with up to 500 foreign adoptions a year, compared with just 250 in much larger countries such as the UK, new research has found. Carl O'Brien, Social Affairs Correspondent reports
A two-year study by the Children's Research Centre at Trinity College Dublin - commissioned by the Adoption Board - found the rate of inter-country adoption is now 10 times that of domestic adoption, which on average involves about 50 children a year.
Experts yesterday said the reasons for the high rate include the relative scarcity of Irish children being offered up for domestic adoption and Ireland's failure to ratify an international convention regulating inter-country adoptions.
The small number of Irish children being placed for adoption is due to a number of factors, including the protection of the family in the Constitution - which makes it almost impossible to adopt a child from a marital family - and a greater acceptance of children born outside marriage.
The lack of regulation on inter-country adoptions means parents are free to go about organising an adoption once they have received a declaration of suitability from the Adoption Board.
However, the Hague Convention - which Ireland has signed but not ratified - requires that inter-country adoptions may take place only where it is in the best interests of the child and where no profit is made from the adoption process.
Norah Gibbons, director of advocacy and central services with the children's charity Barnardos, said it was important that Ireland be part of a better regulated system of international adoptions.
"It sets definite standards which we and other countries must comply with. No one is being critical of parents who are going out there to adopt, but it's in everyone's interest if we are part of a properly regulated system," she said.
The Government signed up to the Hague Convention in respect of inter-country adoptions more than a decade ago, and says it is now actively working to advance ratification of the convention.
The Trinity College research, meanwhile, examined the experiences of 180 children aged between two and 17 who have been adopted from abroad. The report found that children were, on average, 17 months old when adopted, 80 per cent had spent some time in institutional care and they came from 15 different countries.
Given the conditions in which they had typically spent their earliest months or years, the study found that most children had made an "extraordinary recovery".