Ms Susan Lohan:

Most certainly, the Natural Parents Network of Ireland, NPNI, exists as Adoption Loss and it has made a submission to the committee. It is unfortunate that we have not heard from a representative of the group today. It fully supports the release of personal information, including mixed personal information, to all adopted people. The organisation recognises the great injustices which the now adult children of women like themselves have endured. The flipside of the situation is that they would like reciprocal rights. As many committee members know, it was largely a forced adoption system which prevailed in Ireland since the formation of the State and especially since 1952 or 1953 when legal adoption was introduced and came into force. Many of the mothers that the representatives of the NPNI have spoken to and advised in more than 25 years have had very little recollection of all the legal circumstances behind their children’s forced adoptions. Many of those mothers cannot recall the circumstances of their children’s birth due to trauma endured at the time. Those mothers would like the reciprocal right to information on their now adult children.

As adopted people, we certainly have no objections to that. The more open we can be about the situations which prevailed in Ireland the better we will all be. In more than 20 years, I have never met a natural mother who said that she wanted to extinguish the information rights of her child. It is not a right that we afford to any other parent. None of us taking part in this briefing who are parents have the right to hide our children’s birth certificates from them, regardless of the circumstances behind their births. Therefore, the notion that we would afford that right to any other cohort is, frankly, just a complete non-starter. It is nonsense. What is required is openness, transparency and an admission of all the human rights abuses which took place in this arena. Everything that happened must be addressed and spoken about freely.