A chara, – A referendum on children’s rights alongside a proposal to cut children’s allowance? Clearly our Government has a sense of humour.
We’ll see who’s laughing come the next election. – Is mise,
Sir, – I would agree with Vincent Browne (Opinion, October 3rd) that some aspects of the amendment merely restate what is implicit within the constitutional scheme, including the imprescriptible rights of children and the right of the child to be heard . The latter right was held by Ms Justice Finlay Geoghegan to be part of existing due process provisions in GT v KAO ([2008] 3 IR 567). Even the major shift on the adoption of marital children is not that radical when one considers what the Supreme Court said on the matter in the recent case of Nottinghamshire Co Co v B ([2011] IESC 48).
However, Vincent Browne is incorrect to state that State intervention by proportionate means in the proposed amendment is otiose, as the threshold, as established in case law, is currently set at a much higher level than just welfare and safety concerns. Mr Justice Murray in the PKU test case ([2001] 3 IR 635) set the threshold as being “some immediate and fundamental threat to the capacity of the child to continue to function as a human person, physically morally or socially, deriving from an exceptional dereliction of duty on the part of parents to justify such an intervention.” This fails to consider the child as a human person unless there is a threat which is so grave that it impinges on their functioning as a human person. This is needlessly indifferent to the realities faced by children and the role that society should play in safeguarding its most vulnerable. The amendment should be seen, then, neither as a radical departure as portrayed by its detractors, nor a restatement by Mr Browne, but a well-intentioned tinkering that will solve some specific issues. It is by no means a panacea, but it deserves whole-hearted support. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Cathal Malone (October 2nd) writes: “the High Court recognised . . . the child is clearly bonded to the adopting parents and the boy as though they were her own parents and brother respectively. Any sundering of these relationships will cause considerable immediate suffering to the child and a real possibility, if not a probability . . . of long-term serious harm”.
In the 1950s and 1960s in Ireland natural mothers gave birth to their babies in mother and baby homes. Some stayed with their babies until the infant was nearly three years old whereupon they were told one day to dress the child in his or her best clothes and the child was taken from the natural mother and driven to the airport and put on a plane to the US.
More than 2,000 infants were sent illegally to the US. Under the 1952 Adoption Act, it was illegal to adopt Irish children out of the country, yet our State issued passports for each and every child. It was also illegal for non-residents to adopt Irish children, yet some of these American adoptive parents had never set foot in Ireland. From the 1950s onwards, more than 50,000 children were adopted in Ireland and have absolutely no rights whatsoever.
It’s a pity and a great shame that the law didn’t recognise the bond between the child and his/her natural mother back then.
Until such time as adoption is made open and access to adoption files is given freely to the adoptive child (now adult) on request, I will be voting No in the forthcoming referendum. I am tired of being a State secret. – Yours, etc,