Sir, – If Tanya Ward of the Children’s Rights Alliance (March 21st) has any hard evidence that any intercountry adoption registered in Ireland, was obtained through “child trafficking, abduction or the deception of birth parents”, she should immediately report it to the Garda.
The fact that no such complaint exists from the Children’s Rights Alliance confirms the fact that our pre-Hague adoptions are thorough and lawful. These internationally adopted children have not been denied the right to grow up with “parents and families”. They have been adopted from orphanages and baby homes because for so many reasons their birth families were unable to rear them.
I would be shocked to think that the Children’s Rights Alliance believed an orphanage in a birth country was a better place to grow up in than a family unit in an adopted country. The orphanages haven’t magically emptied because Hague exists. Hague hasn’t meant that there are fewerchildren needing families. It means that the families available to to those children are unable to reach them. – Yours, etc
DEIRDRE O’HALLORAN
Garnett Hall,
Dunboyne,
Co Meath
Sir, – In an ideal world, every child would be born into an ideal situation. In the imperfect world we live in, there will always be some who aren’t.
Adoption and fostering are as old as humankind. My own children are internationally adopted, and, far from this being under “a system of light-touch regulation” (Letters, March 21st) both adoptions required rigorous process in both countries.
We have since made contact with the original families of our children, as have many adoptive parents, and I have yet to hear of a case where there was anything misleading or untruthful in the paperwork.
The Hague Convention is very welcome as a further step to absolutely ensure that all adoptions are ethical. The convention’s full title is actually “The 1993 Hague convention on the protection of children and co-operation in respect of intercountry adoption”.
I would like to ask the Adoption Authority what active steps it is taking, and with which countries, to further the stated aims of the convention and to co-operate in respect of intercountry adoption? – Yours, etc,
LINDA KEOHANE,
Furbo,
Co Galway