Campaigners warn of risk of more child abductions
Former Fine Gael MEP Mary Banotti, who first established ICPAC, said she is receiving up to 10 calls a week from people seeking advice and expressing concern about the possible abduction of children.
She said that almost half the calls are from men and that a number are from Muslim women.
"There are now much more people living in Ireland and in relationships in Ireland that come from countries that have not signed the Hague Convention," Ms Banotti said.
"People just need to be aware of the facts, and the facts generally are that it's almost impossible to get children who have been abducted to these countries back again because they haven't signed the international legislation.
She said the number of calls relating to concerns of possible child abduction to non-Hague Convention countries had increased over the past year. In such cases, the Irish Embassies are contacted but there is no legal mechanism to have children returned to Ireland.
In 2003, 66 cases involving 99 children were received, a decrease of 6 cases on 2002.
"I have from six to ten calls a week and that's mainly looking for advice and direction," Ms Banotti said. "We don't give legal advice we're not lawyers we simply advise them as to the procedure and how they should go about it. We deal with a lot of international cases as well."
The warning comes almost a year after the Dylan Benwell case, when the Irish-born schoolboy was taken from his mother's care in the United States and brought back to Cobh in Co Cork by his grandparents, Tim and Ethel Blake.
He has since returned to his mother, Serena, and family in America and Ms Banotti said the case had resulted in the tightening of guidelines in this country.
"I notice a considerably more pro-active method of working on the part of a lot of people since that case," she said.
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