Ms Rhoda MacManus:

On the contact preference register, I was informed by the Minister's adviser that the non-transference of records from the old register to the new one had to do with the purpose for which the first register was set up. It was a passive register and some people could legally object to it being moved over to an active register. That was the reason, in their interpretation of data protection.

I would like to raise the way in which the IOT judgment has been interpreted by the Adoption Authority of Ireland. When somebody applies for a birth certificate and is refused by the Adoption Authority, he or she then has to appeal to the High Court, which makes a judgment as to whether this birth certificate can be released. In the IOT case, the two mothers were consulted and, initially at least, refused for whatever reasons but they were contacted by the State, let us put it that way. The Adoption Authority transferred that interpretation onto the adopted person in a different way. In other words, where an adopted person does not know they are adopted the authorities will not write to that person to say their mother wishes to have contact with them or wishes to get information about how they are.

We have sat across the table with the chief executive, registrar and head social worker of the Adoption Authority and had them tell us that such and such an adoption was not legal and that therefore they had no responsibility to inform this man that he was adopted. His mother could sit there in limbo getting older by the day while she was yearning for her child. We think it is inhumane and a faulty interpretation of the IOT judgment in any case.

I should state again on the record that all of us on our committee, which includes a man who lost a child to adoption, are in regular contact with our adult children so nothing that we do is out of any kind of grievance. It is from our experience that we know the best way to proceed with this Bill and with other legal moves. We know how much faulty and false information and forgery is contained in the files. Every time we advise a mother to request information from her file she discovers things she never knew. I am talking about her age or address being changed, or information that was falsely given to her at the time, for example that her child was going to be adopted when the child was not adopted but was put into care - things like this.

Our concern about the Bill is that the adopted person coming forward seeking, for instance, non-identifying information, which is given without any consultation with the mother, will very often encounter information in the file that is not true. The adopted person's decision to seek contact is then influenced by that information. For instance, the file might contain a social worker's note saying it was well known that such and such a girl was sleeping with every man in town and that was the reason the child was adopted - I am just giving that as an example. Social workers very often made harsh judgments. Many of them would have been religious women and men, priests and nuns in these adoption agencies who made value judgments on the conduct of women.

When we sat on the advisory group to the adoption board, we came across huge reluctance on the part of the social workers represented there about the fact that we wanted to see the information that was in our files, because they knew they would be judged by the standards of today. What we are looking for is the right to read our files and write a statement to correct any misinformation they may contain, not to remove anything from the file. The adopted person would then be able to decide whether what we say is true, or what the social worker or adoption agency said is true.