Averil Power (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Tánaiste to the House. I congratulate her on her new position and particularly on being elected the first female leader of the Leader Party and on promotion to the position of Tánaiste. It is a considerable personal achievement to become the third female Tánaiste of the country. I wish her all the best in her role.
The Bill contains a number of provisions on issues such as marriages of convenience, recording the deaths of Irish people who passed away abroad and the validation of embassy marriages and civil partnerships. Like others, I will focus on the compulsory joint registration of births. Knowing the identity of both parents is an essential human right and one that is recognised under Irish law, the European Convention on the Rights of the Child and international instruments. It is essential that, where at all possible, children should have the opportunity to know and have relationships with both parents. Denying children and continuing to deny adopted adults information on their parents' identity deprives them of their identity. It takes away a part of themselves that they will never know. There is great cruelty in that. We should go out of our way to ensure children have access to the basic information on the names and identities of their parents.
I welcome the fact that the legislation is moving towards ensuring joint registration. Issues must be teased through, as mentioned by Senators, in respect of the best interest of the child. Irish history has treated unmarried fathers dreadfully badly. They have been denied what married fathers automatically have, a right to guardianship and to be involved in the decisions that affect their children. Regardless of their relationship with the mother or the child, unmarried fathers have no automatic right. If the mother is unwilling to sign a declaration adding the father's name to the birth certificate or agreeing to guardianship, a father must fight through the courts to get it. It is incredibly unfair, particularly where the father has been involved and had a relationship with the mother or where he has been emotionally, physically and financially involved in the child's life. He must still prove himself as a parent through the courts. That is wrong and we are so far behind on this issue.
Separate issues include registration of births and guardianship. Some countries provide that once the father's name is registered on the birth certificate, there is an automatic presumption of guardianship, which can then be rebutted if there is a good reason why the man is not fit to be a father. We need to look at the guardianship issue. It would be remiss of me not to raise the right of adopted people to their birth certificates, which I raised with several of the Minister's counterparts. It relates specifically to the brief of the Tánaiste. Adopted people in the UK have had a right to their birth certificates since 1975 yet, 40 years later, Irish adoptees do not have that right. As a result, they are robbed of their identity and basic medical information. For 29 years of my life, when a doctor asked me if there was a genetic illness or whether anyone in the family had cancer or heart disease, I had to tell him I did not know. That question did not involve my thinking of the medical aspects but also made me sad because it made me think about all the other things I did not know about my mother. The Tánaiste has spoken publicly about her experience in that regard and how she found information on her birth family. Every adoptee should have that right. The Tánaiste and I have been fortunate in getting that information. I was one of a handful of people who were matched through the adoption contact preference register, where the matching rate is dismal. It is past time that the State was proactive in giving adoptees the right to their birth certificates, at a minimum, and putting in place a proactive information and tracing service that supports adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents in dealing with these issues. We have pushed the issue under the carpet for far too long.
I implore the Tánaiste to use her position as the Minister for Social Protection with responsibility for the General Registration Office and, as Tánaiste and as someone who cares about this issue, to ensure this injustice is finally put behind us. In the aftermath of the Tuam case the Taoiseach said a referendum might be needed, but many constitutional lawyers argue that that is not the case. Dr. Conor O'Mahony, an expert based in the law department in UCC, pointed out that in the key case of IO'T v.B, the judge said that balancing the right of the adopted person to identity and the right of the birth mother to privacy is a matter for the Oireachtas. He pointed out that legislation introduced, like any other legislation, would benefit from the presumption of constitutionality. We can and should act and I hope the Minister is the one who pushes it.