Jillian van Turnhout (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and thank him and his officials for the work they have done on this Bill. As the Minister said, we are anxious that people can access as much information as possible and that this can be done in a sensitive manner. Dr. Geoffrey Shannon appeared before the committee this morning and he said something quite striking, that we cannot rewrite the past but, equally, we cannot be paralysed by the past. That is what we are trying to ensure here, because all too often we have allowed the past to paralyse us.

The first issue I wish to raise is compelling reasons. As nobody can give us an example of a compelling reason we are all trying to work out where the bar or threshold is. My fears around it were warranted. As Deputy McLellan said, one of the scenarios outlined to us in the presentation from the representatives of the Child and Family Agency was a situation of distress. My understanding was that it was not a compelling reason. Perhaps we should seek to ring-fence it, as Dr. Shannon said, and perhaps look at other areas. It is something we must re-examine.

The Minister will not have seen Dr. Shannon's presentation, but he gave us a very excellent paper that challenges and gives evidence on the interpretations to date surrounding the right to privacy and the right to identity. It shows why we must bring up the right to identity. It is not that privacy will trump it. He gave us an excellent paper with examples and I am sure the Minister will be provided with it.

Like others, I am also concerned about the statutory declarations. Will it be enforced? If I sign something to say I will not do it, does that stop my husband taking it on himself?

I am trying to work through that idea. Does it have to be a social worker with whom one interacts? Could it not be a counsellor or somebody else, as Senator Power and I proposed in the Bill we brought forward in the Seanad?

Another issue that arose this morning is the accessing of records by the Child and Family Agency. What authority will the agency have to take reasonable steps? It gave us an example this morning of accessing parish records. Some parishes have cited data protection reasons and will not allow access to their records. It is a major concern that the agency will not be empowered to take reasonable steps. Perhaps we need to probe a little into what exactly constitute reasonable steps.

On the presentation from the Adoption Authority of Ireland, I am concerned about the issue of illegal adoptions, particularly those that took place prior to the 1952 Act. An exercise was carried out by the Adoption Authority which identified 100 illegal adoptions in a very small sample - I thought the figure was 50. It is very concerned about that and said it wishes to do more work. I ask the Minister to interact with the Adoption Authority to resource that work to ensure that it does happen because that is too much part of our past.

On the information and awareness campaign, I was reassured to a certain extent by what Cormac Quinlan of the Child and Family Agency said to us this morning about how it will be done. Perhaps the Minister should ask that when a plan has been devised, it will come before the Joint Committee on Health and Children so that Deputies, in particular, because they meet so many individuals, will understand the public representation issue. It is a good place to discuss the public information campaign. We get one chance to get it right so we need to test it first and I think this committee should have a role in that.

The meetings were not in the order that we had wished them to be. The Minister made a commitment to look at the committee's recommendations when its report - which I hope will be timely - is produced and put them into the heads of the Bill. I appreciate that commitment.