Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for the breakdown there. With regard to Bessborough House, perhaps it is best that we wait for the report to come out. It will have a detailed chapter on Bessborough. It would be best to look at it then and we will be in a position to address queries about the next steps.

The Senator has raised an important issue about adoption. The reason information and tracing legislation has not come to pass until now is this balance. The I O'T v. B case of 1998 suggested it was needed because of the privacy rights of the natural mother and the rights of the adopted person. There is a range of rights and views. It is worth saying the case was decided before the GDPR was introduced, and looking at personal information such as names and birth certificates will have to be examined in the context of the GDPR. However, the reality of life has jumped past this situation. Earlier, I spoke to a friend who did an online DNA test and is identifying family members or distant relatives throughout the country and in other countries.

I refer to the ability of these things to skip past the legalities of whatever is in the legislation. People can be linked with somebody on Facebook who might end up being their second cousin. They may ask the person was there an aunt who was away from the family for a number of months 40 years ago and suddenly the story comes out. Technology and modern life has moved on a long way from when the I.O'T case was decided. Whereas constitutional rights and the need to balance rights are always there and do not change with technology, we have to understand that people will do whatever they can to find out who they are because it is such an innate need in all of us. We have to draft and conceptualise the legislation in this area to meet the reality of how technology today allows adopted people find out a considerable amount of information that maybe statute does not provide for now. We have to ask ourselves if there is a point in statute continuing to block that.

Finally, as I say, I will reach out and talk to many groups. I am trying to talk to individuals as well and hear their stories and I have been doing that already this week. I will continue to do that in the forthcoming weeks. I need to build this sort of listening in as part of my ongoing work as Minister in this Department. I thank the Senator.