James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman and the Oireachtas Joint Committee for Health and Children for inviting me to address it on the heads of the adoption (information and tracing) Bill 2015. The legislation is of huge importance to people who have been affected by adoption, and addresses some very challenging legal issues, so I am grateful to the committee for taking the time to provide pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill, and I very much look forward to considering its views during the detailed drafting stages. The Government made a commitment to modernise and reform outdated elements of family law, and to consolidate and reform the law on adoption. The Bill is an integral part of this reform agenda.

Adoption can provide children with the invaluable experience of growing up in a loving home, an experience of which they would otherwise have been deprived. As Minister for Children and Youth Affairs I have been privileged to meet many adopted people who have spoken passionately about how the love of their adopted parents is one of the most important things in their lives. However, I am also acutely aware that many people affected by adoption did not have a positive experience. Adoptions conducted in conditions of strict secrecy, under the crushing weight of oppressive social stigma, have meant that in the past, too many people have had a very negative experience of adoption. Some felt they had little choice but to give up their baby for adoption. Without doubt, the historical experience of adoption in Ireland failed to recognise the central importance of identity information to our sense of self, and it is this legacy that we seek to address in the Bill. I do want to stress, however, that we should not allow our history to define the modern experience of adoption. The reality of adoption in Ireland now is very different than in the past, and one of the aims of the Bill is to further enhance the adoption process, so that in future adoption is a much more positive experience for children and for both sets of parents.

Many of those seeking information about their natural parents have emphasised the support they got from their adoptive parents in their quest for information. It is important that adoptive parents fully embrace their responsibilities to support and assist their adoptive children when they start to ask questions about their background and identity.

For many of the women who were separated from their babies, the legacy of adoption has been a sad, and often lonely, one. Some felt they had no real choice but to give up their child for adoption, and have struggled with that decision ever since. The secrecy in which adoptions were conducted in Ireland the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and perhaps later, meant that many of these women had to carry that burden alone, keeping the secret even from their husbands and subsequent children. I fully understand the difficulty these women may now face in coming forward but I encourage mothers whose children were adopted in the past to consider contacting Tusla, or the Adoption Authority of Ireland. They will be afforded confidentiality, care and empathy and the chance to get appropriate support, information and guidance about a period of their life is that undoubtedly the source of much pain.

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