Senator calls for agency to assist 20 adoptions from Vietnam
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Senator calls for agency to assist 20 adoptions from Vietnam
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CAROL COULTER Legal Affairs Editor
A FINE Gael Senator has called on the Government to enlist the assistance of the Helping Hands adoption agency in processing 20 adoptions from Vietnam.
These are adoptions that the Vietnamese authorities have agreed can go ahead despite the lapsing of a bilateral agreement on adoption between the two countries. The applications were received in Vietnam before the agreement lapsed, and they will go ahead with the assistance of the Irish Embassy.
The processing of the 20 applications was discussed during a visit to Vietnam by the Minister for Children, Barry Andrews, over the summer. “Vietnam said as an act of goodwill they would administer as a unique group,” a spokesman for the Minister told The Irish Times. “The Adoption Board will then look at each one individually to make sure the criteria of the 1991 Adoption Act are fulfilled.”
The spokesman said that because the Helping Hands adoption agency had had its licence revoked by the Vietnamese government when the bilateral agreement lapsed, consular support would be provided by the Department of Foreign Affairs in consultation with the Adoption Board.
Fine Gael Seanad spokeswoman on education and science Fidelma Healy-Eames yesterday criticised the use of the department, saying it did not have expertise in the area and this was leading to delays. “The facts are the Irish Adoption Board and the Helping Hands agency have worked closely and competently together now for many years,” she said.
“The revocation of the Helping Hands licence, due to Minister Andrews’s unwillingness to renew the bilateral agreement on time, has discredited the good work that the agency has done in the past.
“I am calling on the Department of Foreign Affairs, as a means of expediting the painful process for these 20 couples and their waiting babies, to enlist, in good faith, the expertise of Helping Hands agency until this matter is brought to a satisfactory conclusion.”
Meanwhile, an unpublished draft report on adoption from Vietnam by the UN, was highly critical of the Helping Hands agency, describing its public information as “at least somewhat misleading and consequently disturbing in its implications”. The draft report, from the UN’s International Social Service (ISS), is under consideration by the Minister.
The response of the Helping Hands agency to this report is expected to be contained in the final report from the ISS.
This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times
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