Call for ratification of child convention

The Law Reform Commission will today call on the Government to ratify an international convention on the protection of children involved in intercountry adoptions.

Nine years after it first made the call, the commission says in a consultation paper that the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children should be incorporated into Irish law.

While the Government has promised legislation to ratify the convention, it is unlikely to be enacted before the general election.

The Attorney General asked the commission to examine intercountry adoptions following controversy over Tristan Dowse, the Indonesian boy who became an Irish citizen after being adopted at two months by an Irish-Azeri couple.

They returned him to the orphanage two years later when they decided the adoption was not working out.

Intercountry adoptions where the adoptive parents do not live in Ireland account for 10 per cent of all the intercountry adoptions registered here.

In its consultation paper the commission calls for extensive analysis of the outcomes of such intercountry adoptions in Ireland, as well as research on pre-adoption procedures.

It also recommends that post-adoption services, particularly counselling, should be made available on an established basis for both domestic and intercountry adoptions.

The Adoption Board should develop and maintain best practice guidelines for verifying the authenticity of adoption documentation presented in Ireland for the purposes of recognising foreign adoptions.

In a review of the Dowse case, the commission said it should remain the law that an adoptive child should be entitled to become an Irish citizen even where its adoptive Irish parent and the child is resident outside the State.

Children such as Tristan Dowse should be treated comparably in terms of their rights as any other child of Irish parents.

However, the commission highlights the practical difficulties of ensuring the legal and constitutional rights of an Irish citizen child who is living outside the State.