Sir, - Mr Anton Sweeney's references to the import, export and "sourcing" of children are offensive. He writes of them as if they were commodities to be bought and sold on a whim (July 1st).
Most of the children adopted into Ireland are - as he calls them - "true orphans". Does Anton Sweeney consider an orphanage or institution to be the ideal place for a child to spend the most important, formative years of his life? Does he see any psychological or cultural benefit to a child to be tied to a cot in some God-forsaken orphanage, without any genuine prospect of living to adolescence, let alone to adulthood.
In the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, when there were not enough adoptive parents in Ireland for the numbers of children available for adoption, some two thousand children were sent to the United States for adoption. The alternative was to remain in institutions such as Artane and Goldenbridge.
For the majority of those sent to the US, there would at least have been the realistic prospect that the children would be loved within a family unit, and would be well educated.
Many of those Irish/American adopted people are making contact with the Adoptive Parents Association of Ireland and I have yet to encounter an unhappy individual who suffered because of their adoption (though realistically, there must be some). Those I have spoken to have invariably been confident, well educated and were leading happy, productive lives. Their self-esteem seemed to be intact.
Contrast that with the stories I hear from those who were left to rot here in our own institutions until they were 16, and then thrown out to fend for themselves, barely educated and never having experienced a kind word or gentle caress. Self-esteem? You must be joking.
Mr Sweeney suggests that children should be adopted from Rwanda. Does he not see something morally wrong in removing children from a war situation. Does he not realise that their own surviving family members will be - and are - frantically searching for their loved ones? That their own tribes-people will need these children in the future, to "compensate" for the hundreds of thousands who were killed? He can't have it every way. His is a very bleak agenda.
The granting of the Adoption Order makes the adopted child as true a citizen of Ireland as is Anton Sweeney. Most of those parents who have adopted from overseas will have every intention of helping their child to an understanding of his cultural and biological heritage. They will avail of any opportunity to enable the child revisit the land of his birth in the future. (The excellent Thai Department of Social Welfare makes special arrangements for Thai adopted children and their families to revisit the country.) Some parents have already brought their children back to Romania for a holiday, while others intend to do so in the future.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted by the UN on November 20th, 1989, came into force in Ireland on October 28th, 1992. Several Articles, especially Articles 20 and 21, either refer to adoption, or border on adoption practice. Presumably the Articles in this convention, together with the Hague Convention on inter-country adoption, provide the criteria by which inter-country adoption agreements will be drafted by most countries in the foreseeable future. - Yours, etc.,
Helen Gilmartin, Hon Sec
Adoptive Parents Association of Ireland, Bray, Co Wicklow.