The adoption controversy over a four-year-old Romanian girl continued yesterday, with the Romanian authorities and her Dundalk foster mother disagreeing over what was said when the child first came to Ireland.
A Romanian social worker who accompanied Mihaela Florica-Porumbaru to Ireland said yesterday that she told Mrs Briege Hughes of Dundalk, Co Louth, that the child was not living in an orphanage.
Ms Alina Gabriela-Stancu was speaking at a press conference organised by the Dambovita Child Protection Commission in Tirgoviste to explain its role in and concerns about the controversy.
She said she felt obliged to clarify the situation. "I told her that when Mihaela comes back she would go to a foster family and never have to return to an orphanage."
Mihaela was originally due to return on Monday but has remained in Ireland for medical tests. Abandoned as a baby, she is paralysed from the waist down.
Mrs Hughes said on Wednesday that the first time she heard the girl had a foster family in Romania was when she read an interview in The Irish Times. She believed the child would be sent to an orphanage.
Yesterday on RTE Mrs Hughes said it was never made clear to her that Mihaela was fostered.
Asked if the social worker had told her about the Romanian foster family, she said: "That I don't believe . . . I never heard that lady [the social worker] say it before. It was never made clear to me."
Last night Mrs Hughes's son, James, said they had always believed that the child was living in an orphanage. Speaking from their home in Dundalk he said the social worker had "said nothing".
In Romania yesterday Mr Ivan Ivanoff, president of the Dambovita Child Protection Commission, said they had been insistent on Mihaela coming home at the appointed time because as her legal guardians they had given her over to a charity, but the charity's legal writ over her expired on August 27th.
A meeting of the child protection committee had now decided that to facilitate her medical tests Mihaela could stay in Ireland until her visa ran out on November 21st.