Mr. Paul Redmond:

I agree with everybody that there should be no fees. I completely agree as well about the national contact register. It would be terribly wasteful to just throw that to one side and start all over again. If a mechanism can be found to move it from its old function as a passive register to a more active register it should be looked into.

I was questioned about the one year lead in. Since the start of this year I am aware of at least seven survivors who have died in our small, active community. The longer this goes on the more survivors will die and the more people will end up visiting Glasnevin Cemetery or somewhere like that to meet their mothers. This cannot happen fast enough as far as I am concerned; it really is a matter of urgency. Deputy Troy made that point as well. Whatever resources were going to be put into advertising during the one year lead in should be thrown into a far more intensive campaign of 30 to 60 days.

An awful lot of good could be done if a figure like the Taoiseach, the President or the church would co-operate in, for example, sending a letter out to be read at all masses on a Sunday. If a public speech was put out there when this Bill is actually passed, by a major public figure from the church or State, it would let everybody know almost overnight that there is something going on. That would make the papers and the news, as opposed to the commission of inquiry into mother and baby homes for example. We were promised and assured there would be a lot of advertising to make sure everybody knew that was going on. So far there seems to have been one or two tiny little ads in Sunday papers - no wonder nobody knows it is actually going on. We need to be far more proactive on that. If we are more proactive in promoting what is going on we can reduce that one year lead in to 30 to 60 days and we will be doing a huge favour for a number of people who will still have time to reunite.

One other thing that has been brought up here several times is the issue of adoptees who do not know they are adopted or are illegally adopted. I firmly believe, as does Theresa Hiney who runs the Adopted Illegally Ireland group, that the State has an absolute duty of care to let adopted people know they are adopted. If they are the victims of crime - the victims of false paperwork - they should be told, especially in this day and age as medical science advances and medical history becomes more and more important.

Several months ago, Angelina Jolie, discovering that there was a history of breast cancer in her family, very bravely had a double mastectomy. She went public about it to inform people about their health, which was an incredibly brave thing to do. Imagine that she had gone through that and then discovered that she was adopted. It is a crazy situation.

I sat in Holles Street Hospital holding my wife's hand when we were going to have our first baby. There was a midwife sitting there saying, "Can I just get your medical history?" I vividly remember going through my wife's medical history and I said I was adopted. That is totally unfair, but it would be even less fair on illegally adopted people to give false medical histories. That is outrageous. The State has a duty of care and I insist that it must tell people.