Couples who want to adopt foreign children have to wait 11 months before they can be assessed in the Eastern Health Board area, according to social workers in the EHB's foreign adoption section. The assessment usually takes six months.
Some couples have been trying to have a baby for up to 15 years before they go on the waiting list, social work manager Ms Ann McWilliams told The Irish Times.
This painful waiting intensifies the frustration they feel when faced with a long delay in starting an assessment, she said. But her section does not have the resources to process applications more quickly.
The EHB has nine social workers running training courses for would-be adoptive parents, as well as carrying out pre-adoption and, where countries require it, post-adoption assessments.
Defending the detailed assessment process which has recently come under criticism, social worker Ms Mary Meyler said 200 people had been assessed and approved, and 18 turned down since 1992, and none of the subsequent adoptions had broken down.
"That has to be significant and we wish people would take that into account when they say `who are social workers to do these assessments and who is the Eastern Health Board to do it?' "
Asked why couples undergoing assessment for adoption and fostering are questioned about the quality of their sexual relationships, Ms McWilliams said, "It's about the stability of the relationship.
"If the couple are meeting one another's needs in every way as far as they can, they are less likely to separate. These children have already lost their first set of parents and ideally we want them to have these parents for as long as they need them."
Social workers had also been criticised for talking about problems adoptive parents faced in coping with children whose early experiences had been very bad. But, said Ms McWilliams, "you're talking about taking a child from an institution who may have been physically starved, have had poor medical care, or who has definitely had emotional deprivation or sensory deprivation.
"These children are not going to trust adults, these children haven't had that foundation, so it's a lot of hard work."
"We feel it's important if you are taking a child from a particular country that you have some link or connection to that country because you're going to be a Russian-Irish family or a Mexican-Irish family for generations," added Ms McWilliams.
The Romanian authorities require that the assessment include written material from the couple to show they know something about Romania.
"There have also been some criticisms about us asking about racial issues," said Ms Meyler. But "there will be comments in school, on the street, there will be parents who don't want your children to come into the house because they're Romanian."