Ms Patricia White:

Barnardos welcomes the opportunity to make a presentation to the joint committee on the heads of the Adoption (Information and Tracing) Bill. Being Paddy Last, much of what I was going to say has already been said.

Barnardos has provided a post-adoption service since 1977. Having been in that service for 30 years, I am aware that there has been much debate about the rights to birth certificates, etc. I am glad that the Bill will address these issues. Barnardos provides a unique service, in that it was never an adoption agency, offering an independent and confidential service to birth parents, adopted people, adoptive parents and their families. This has grown from its beginnings as a telephone helpline on adoption to the wide range of services now offered to all involved in adoption. Through our various services, we have gained great experience and a good overview of the changing Irish adoption situation during the years. We are proud that we have managed to keep the service going with very limited resources for the past 38 years and are committed to its continuation. Ours is the only service which has provided a group work service for birth mothers and adopted adults for over 25 years. We also offer group work and training to adoptive parents and run sessions for birth fathers, as well as individual and group sessions for intercountry adoptive families.

We have offered a mediation service to those matched through the national adoption contact preference register since its inception in 2005. We have also worked with a large number of information and tracing cases at the request of the Adoption Authority of Ireland where there has been a delay in the transfer of records of closed adoption agencies, which has happened quite a lot recently. Obviously, ours is a small service and there is only so much we can take on. We also run a service called Origins for people raised in institutions. They only have a birth certificate but no other information. We provide a service for them to contact their birth families to see if they are open to contact. Obviously, there are no statutory declarations or compelling reasons involved.

We provide that one counselling session which many people have suggested as an alternative to the statutory declaration. We have been doing this since we started in 1977. It is worth noting that many Irish birth mothers have been affected by the change of law in the United Kingdom in 1976 giving an unequivocal right to an adopted person to his or her original birth certificate. As a confidential independent service, ours is a likely place for people affected by these legal changes to contact. To be fair, we have received very few inquiries where this law has had a negative outcome in the past 38 years. The issues in these cases have more to do with after the reunion or search where it has not worked out as people expected such as where the birth parents are deceased, a regular occurrence as the population affected gets older. However, we are aware of the constitutional issues involved in Ireland.

We agree that statutory declaration is not the way to go. We are concerned about the compelling reasons. Who would make the decision? The compelling reasons could deny an adopted person access to his or her birth certificate. It is a huge step. As drafted, we do not believe it is going to work.

The Bill could be strengthened if those involved in the process were offered appropriate support and guidance. The use of preparation groups could be useful in this regard. In our course for birth mothers we always invite adopted people and adoptive parents along to talk about their experiences. The role of accredited agencies needs to be clarified and strengthened. We are concerned that the huge range of expertise gained by voluntary agencies since 1952 be used. We would like to see the NACPR, national adoption contact preference register, amalgamated. We would like to see the American-Irish adoptions included, although false registrations have been included.

The best people to tell anybody that he or she has been adopted are their family, not somebody like me, a social worker, or a Government agency. Perhaps there might be some campaign for those who are aware of illegal adoptions, or otherwise, that they would be supported in some way in telling people.

Barnardos tends to link people on a one to one basis with others in the same boat. For instance, a woman concerned about telling her family that she placed a child for adoption would be linked with another mother or a group to gain the courage and understand it might not be as bad as she envisages.