THE ADOPTION Board has approved in principle the setting up of a mediation agency to facilitate intercountry adoptions. It is being set up in anticipation of Ireland ratifying the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions, due in the Dáil this session, which requires such agencies.
Up to now, the only Irish mediation agency was the Cork-based Helping Hands Adoption Agency, which facilitated adoptions from Vietnam. Its mediation licence was revoked by the Vietnamese government in June, following the lapsing of a bilateral agreement on adoption between the countries.
Helping Hands received €1.6 million in HSE and lottery funding from its setting up in 2006, and employs four staff in Ireland and four in Vietnam. The new mediation agency, provisionally called Leanbh, is being set up by a number of leading members of the International Adoption Association. Its constitution and means of operating are set within the framework of the Hague Convention. Following its ratification, only other countries that have ratified it may send children to Ireland for intercountry adoption.
The Leanbh proposal is based on dealing with four sending countries. “The proposed agency will have a clear child-centred ethos and will operate to the highest international standards. It will be governed according to the principles of the Hague Convention, Irish adoption legislation and the laws of any sending country operated within. The agency will comply with all reporting and oversight requirements set for accredited agencies,” it states.
It anticipates requiring investment of €760,000 over three years, made up of €600,000 in grant aid in two draw-downs starting in 2009. The promoters will also engage in fundraising for €60,000 and will seek €100,000 in refundable grant aid, to be paid off at the end of year four.
It states that this level of funding is based on the inability of any agency to recoup costs through leveraging fees under current legislation. However, it states the new adoption legislation will enable such an agency to charge fees and proposes a charge of €3,500 per adoption to cover costs. The proposal says it aims to accommodate up to 260 adoptions by 2012, about one-third of intercountry adoptions into Ireland.
All but one of the promoters of the new agency are adoptive parents of children who came to Ireland through intercountry adoption, including Shane Downer, chief executive of the International Adoption Association. There is also an independent director with no direct experience of adoption.