Legal concerns stall couple’s adoption plans
Such concerns have raised doubt over whether children adopted from Ethiopia may ultimately be registered as citizens here and the situation has yet to be fully clarified, the board said.
The board expressed its concerns yesterday during the hearing of a challenge by a couple to decisions by the board that, the couple claim, are preventing them adopting a baby girl from Ethiopia.
The couple had previously adopted another child from Ethiopia and said the proposed second adoption might fall through within days if they did not get certain necessary documents.
Peter Finlay SC, for the couple, told an earlier hearing of the case that the Minister for Justice had previously granted the necessary immigration clearance for them to bring the child from Ethiopia into the State and the matter was one of urgency.
The Adoption Board had on August 30 issued a document to the couple confirming they were the holders of a declaration of suitability and eligibility to adopt a child outside the State.
Kiernan Gildea, registrar of the board, said in an affidavit that the board is mindful of the stress involved in undertaking intercountry adoptions but it could not yet, pending a full assessment not yet completed, provide full assurance that Ethiopian adoptions are compatible with Irish law.
In this case, the couple had declarations of eligibility and suitability to adopt and that position remained unchanged. The declarations were not specific to any particular country.
For a foreign adoption to be registered here, the adoption must meet certain conditions under the Adoption Act 1991, including that it be “in accordance with the law of the place where it was effected” and must have substantially the same effect as an adoption effected under Irish law.
The hearing before Mr Justice Garret Sheehan continues today.
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