Having it both ways on adoption policy

The statement by Frances Fitzgerald, the children’s minister, that she is “going to consider” possible changes to the 2010 Adoption Act to make it easier for Irish couples to adopt from a wider range of countries is more than worrying.

It flies in the face of everything we know — or should have learned — about ensuring that intercountry adoptions take place in accordance with the rights and best interests of the children concerned.

Ireland took 17 years to ratify the 1993 Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, and was the very last significant “receiving country” to do so. To date, 90 countries — both “receiving” and “countries of origin” — are parties to that treaty, which was developed to provide compulsory safeguards for cross-border adoptions in the light of growing, widespread, and egregious malpractice documented during the 1970s and 1980s. Ireland’s 2010 Adoption Act reflects the requirements of the Hague Convention and, in so doing, finally enabled ratification to go ahead.